Industrial Wastewater Treatment in Bio-electrochemical Systems

Abstract

The age of industrialization has brought a new dawn of global order and has led to advancement of mankind. The dynamics of industrial growth accompanied with rapid population increase has created stresses on the natural resources. These industries requires tremendous source of energy and freshwater for generating various consumable products. The aftermath of these industrial activities leads to production of huge amount of wastewater that requires treatment prior to its disposal. The wastewater generated has a wide range of pollutants, which are produced uniquely in different type of industries implementing an array of processes. Furthermore, the ever-increasing complex nature of industrial wastewater (IWW) makes the conventional treatment fall short of achieving the respective discharge standards of individual industries. Furthermore, to improve their treatment efficiency, efforts by combining physico-chemical (filtration, coagulation etc.) and biological (activated sludge process, up flow anaerobic sludge blanket, sequencing batch reactor, moving bed biofilm reactor) have been devised, thereby making it highly energy-intensive. However, use of sustainable solutions, that is, bioelectrochemical systems (BESs), will carry out efficient treatment and also help recover energy in the form of electricity, hydrogen, and other valuable products. The BESs convert chemical energy to electrical energy with the help of microbes operating under ambient conditions unlike the extreme operational condition of conventional polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells. These systems have been used to treat different types of wastewater from various industries, viz. dairy, electroplating, chocolate, brewery, paper, textile, pharmaceutical, rice mill wastewater, etc. In this chapter, we will discuss the characteristics and challenges posed in the treatment of dairy, brewery, textile, pharmaceutical, paper industry, and rice mill wastewater in BES, such as microbial fuel cell, microbial electrolysis cell, microbial desalination cell, and microbial remediation cell.KeywordsIndustrial wastewaterBioelectrochemical systemsRice mill wastewaterPharmaceutical wastewaterTextile wastewater