Towards upscaling microbial desalination cell technology: A comprehensive review on current challenges and future prospects

Exploring Avoided Environmental Impacts as Well as Energy and Resource Recovery from Microbial Desalination Cell Treatment of Brine

“…MDCs are based on the metabolism of electroactive bacteria, which provide the energy needed to drive the desalination process [15,20,21]. Sources of energy (namely, the feedstock provided to bacteria) can be wastewater, activated sludge, dyed industrial effluents, cattle manure, nitrates in groundwater, and many others even though, especially at lab scale, sodium acetate is provided as a source of carbon and energy [22,23]. As essentially based on microbial metabolism, MDCs are listed among the renewable energy-based technologies, even though they can be in need for external potentials to control the desalination process itself [15,22].…”

“…Sources of energy (namely, the feedstock provided to bacteria) can be wastewater, activated sludge, dyed industrial effluents, cattle manure, nitrates in groundwater, and many others even though, especially at lab scale, sodium acetate is provided as a source of carbon and energy [22,23]. As essentially based on microbial metabolism, MDCs are listed among the renewable energy-based technologies, even though they can be in need for external potentials to control the desalination process itself [15,22]. Recently, some authors reported the recovery of value-added products (such as H2, HCl, fulvic and humic acids, volatile fatty acids, SO 4 2− ) and the removal of pollutants from wastewater in association with the desalination process in four-or even five-chambers MDCs [22,24].…”

“…As essentially based on microbial metabolism, MDCs are listed among the renewable energy-based technologies, even though they can be in need for external potentials to control the desalination process itself [15,22]. Recently, some authors reported the recovery of value-added products (such as H2, HCl, fulvic and humic acids, volatile fatty acids, SO 4 2− ) and the removal of pollutants from wastewater in association with the desalination process in four-or even five-chambers MDCs [22,24]. Other applications explored are groundwater remediation and hardness removal in water [23].…”

“…Santoro et al [21] showed the increase of power outputs (up to 3.01 ± 0.01 W m −2 ) and desalination efficiency (about 60% removal in 44 h) in comparison with their negative control (traditional MDCs) by connecting a third electrode to the cathode and applying a pulse current of 2 and 3 mA every 2 s. Briefly, model MDCs are generally made up by three chambers (anode, cathode, and central chambers) separated by ions-exchanging membranes, even though multiplechambers systems are used for the recovery of chemicals [15,23]. Figure 1 shows the schematic diagram of three-and four-chambers MDCs, according to Rahman et al [22].…”

Sensitivity Analysis of a Mathematical Model for Microbial Desalination Cells

“…Since BES are complicated systems , comprehensive mathematical models is important to understand the dynamic relation between physical , chemical , biological and electrochemical processes , so BES modelling is essential step towards optimization and scaling up [4] . However , Few MDC models are reported in the literature [5]. Ping Model is a MDC model with many parameters that increases the complexity of the model.…”