The reaction of wastewater treatment and power generation of single chamber microbial fuel cell against substrate concentration and anode distributions.

Abstract

This study demonstrated the effectiveness of single chamber up-flow membrane-less microbial fuel cell (UFML-MFC) in wastewater treatment concurrently with bioelectricity generation. The objectives of this study were to examine the effect of influent substrate concentration (0.405g/L, 0.810g/L, 1.215g/L, 1.620g/L), anode distributions (11cm, 17cm, 23cm )and surface morphologies for biofilm formation on the performance of wastewater treatment and power generation. The optimum performance was obtained with substrate concentration of 0.810g/L. The COD removal efficiency, output voltage, internal resistance, power density and current density obtained were 84.64%, 610mV, 200Ω, 162.59mW/m2 and 468.74mA/m2,respectively. The Coulombic Efficiency (CE), Normalized Energy Recovery (NERS and NERv) were 1.03%, 789.38 kWh/kg COD and 22.56 kWh/m3,respectively. The results also indicate that the output voltage and power generation obtained in a continuous up-flow MFC were higher with A3 (23cm), which is of larger electrodes spacing followed by A2 (17cm) and A1 (11cm) caused by the enrichment of anaerobic microbial population at A1.