Chapter 15 - Bioremediation by MFC technology

Abstract

As the world gears up for the Net Zero carbon emissions, demand for raw materials is set to skyrocket as they are key elements of global economy and they have essential roles in improvement of life quality and the performance of manufacturing productivity. The various conventional treatment methods, including physical, chemical, and biological processes, may become outdated and may generally be restricted due to associated disadvantages such as high initial capital cost, chemical requirements, and sludge generation. Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) have the potential to overcome these disadvantages and produce renewable energy from wastewater or recover precious metals from waste. In BESs processes, chemical energy is converted into electrical energy from the oxidation of waste using electrogenic biocatalysts. Microbial electrochemical systems (MESs) can result in interactions between microorganisms, metals, and electrodes, in which the electron transfer chain associated with both aerobic and anaerobic microbial respiration can play a critical role to overcome these challenges. This chapter summarizes the studies conducted on the various BES processes, namely microbial fuel cells (MFCs), anaerobic microbial fuel cells (ANMFCs), sediment microbial fuel cells (SMFCs), benthic microbial fuel cells (BMFCs), and thermophilic microbial fuel cells (TMFCs), to treat wastewater rich in heavy metals. We document the state of the art concerning various BES applications and emphasize that organic waste can be eliminated as an electron donor via microbe-catalyzed oxidization at the anode and metals recovered at the cathode as electron acceptors through reduction.