Utilization of Microbial Fuel Cells to generate electrical energy from tanning industry waste treatment

Abstract

The leather tanning industry is known as an industry that is not environmentally friendly because it produces a lot of waste in the process. The resulting liquid waste contains heavy metal chromium (Cr), high chemical oxygen demand (COD), and several other nutrient compounds that can be decomposed by microorganism. By utilizing Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) or microbe-based electrochemical cells, this is an example of alternative technology that can be developed as replacement energy because this fuel cell converts chemical energy into electrical energy using microorganisms. In the research conducted, MFC Dual Chamber was used with aluminum as the electrode and there were two substrates, namely glucose as a nutrient and rice field mud as a biocatalyst from microbes found in tannery wastewater. After observing the value of electric power which shows the existence of an electric potential, in variation 1, namely liquid waste from leather tanning with glucose substrate and rice field mud, the power is 167.13 Watts. As for variation 2, which is liquid waste from tanning leather with glucose substrate, the power obtained is 48.11 Watt, and for the last variation, namely the three liquid wastes from tanning leather with rice field mud substrate, the resulting power value is 13.54 µWatt. From the results of research that has been carried out, it is proven that the treatment of leather tanning liquid waste using the MFC Dual Chamber method can generate electrical potential. And with the addition of substrate in the form of rice field mud and glucose as a source of microbes and nutrients for liquid waste can produce a higher electrical potential.