Development and characterization of novel low-cost engineered pine needle biochar and montmorillonite clay based proton exchange membrane for microbial fuel cell

Abstract

Microbial fuel cells (MFC) are a potential method for treating wastewater and recovering energy. Proton exchange membranes (PEM) are one of the MFC's main parts and have a big impact on both how well it works and how much it costs. In this paper, low cost and affordable membrane was developed from forestry waste pine needles. Pine needle (PN) biochar was prepared by pyrolysis at 600 °C and then sulphonation was done. Sulphonated pine needle biochar (SPB) was mixed with montmorillonite clay (MMT) as inorganic support for preparing membrane. Conductivity, ion exchange capacity, and proton mass transfer coefficient of different membranes were evaluated and found to be 2.53 ± 0.23 S/cm × 10−4, 3.27 meq/g, and 11.35 × 10−5, respectively for SPB30-MMT. Compared to bare MMT membrane (6.13 %), SPB30-MMT membrane had a greater water uptake capacity (31.95 %). These membranes were examined by deploying in MFCs and gave 86 % chemical oxygen demand removal efficiency and 297 mV voltage output, simultaneously. This study indicates that PN biochar-based membranes could be an affordable option for producing bioelectricity through microbial fuel cells.