Simultaneous use of a crossflow filtration membrane as microbial fuel cell anode – Permeate flow leads to 4-fold increased current densities

Toward an Energy Efficient Wastewater Treatment: Combining a Microbial Fuel Cell/Electrolysis Cell Anode With an Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor

“…For the experiments with filtering anode and hybrid anode, we used a commercial cross-flow filtration setup (Sartoflow Study, Sartorius, Germany) as described by Madjarov et al (2018). The filtration device consisted of two main parts: a 5 L glass reactor and a custom-made polypropylene membrane cassette.…”

“…Simultaneous use of filtration membranes as microbial anodes was demonstrated by using commercially available electrically conductive filters of different filter grades made from sintered stainless steel (CrNi-steel grade 1.4404; GKN, Radevormwald, Germany), as suggested by Madjarov et al (2018). To test the effect of membrane pore size, 2.5 mm thick membranes with filter grade of 0.5 µm (SIKA-R 0.5 AX) and 0.1 µm (SIKA-R 0.1 AS) were used.…”

“…Recently it has been shown that a porous microbial anode operated with Geobacter sulfurreducens in synthetic acetate medium can at the same time serve as AnMBR filter operated in cross-flow configuration (Madjarov et al, 2018). The combination of the two technologies patented as filtration active fuel cell (Danzer and Kerzenmacher, 2014a,b) aims not only at electricity generation to reduce the energy demand of membrane bioreactors, but also at eliminating soluble COD in the effluent of AnMBRs (Yuan and He, 2015).…”

“…The overall objective of this study is to test the recently proposed concept for the integration of a microbial anode into an AnMBR by Madjarov et al (2018) under application relevant conditions, using a mixed anaerobic microbial consortium treating synthetic brewery wastewater. To this end, we operated an AnMBR inoculated with a mixture of aerobic and anaerobic sludge from a wastewater treatment plant and Geobacter sulfurreducens.…”

“…This is of particular relevance in case of the filtering anode, where biofilm formation is important for current production but at the same time may lead to lower permeate flux. Furthermore, previous work has demonstrated that high permeate flux through the porous anode structure leads to increased current densities (Madjarov et al, 2018).We therefore also investigated the effect of two fouling mitigation methods on the permeate fluxes. The first method, electrochemical cleaning, has been shown as an effective fouling mitigation method in literature (Liu et al, 2013;Tian et al, 2014;Formoso et al, 2017).…”