TOP 1%
5. Conclusion
Domestic wastewater, if left untreated, can be the main source of pollution in the environment, but it can also be used as a raw material for energy production and nutrient recovery. Domestic wastewater treatment, bioelectricity generation and resource recovery simultaneously by using MFC is an eco-friendly strategy and provides many benefits. These include one, it helps the direct generation of renewable electric power from waste. The power generated can be reused for wastewater treatment processes and thus minimizes costs associated with the energy consumption for heating the process. Second, it treats domestic wastewater
by removing COD and releases good quality effluents before discharging it to the environment, thus achieving a low environmental footprint. Third, it assists resource recovery like phosphorus, carbon-rich compounds and nitrogen from domestic wastewater because of the effective combination of biological processes and electrochemical processes in bioelectrochemical systems. Especially, nitrogen and phosphorous are highly important in the agricultural process due to their use as fertilizers.
However, the performance of MFC depends on the electroactive microorgan- isms, commonly known as exoelectrogens. Moreover, the operating parameters such as loading rate of organic substrate, pH, MFC configurations, hydraulic retention time, and temperature all have an impact on MFC performance during domestic wastewater treatment. In most cases, the performance of MFC can be evaluated by measuring three parameters: COD removal efficiency, Coulombic efficiency and MFC power density output. One of the elements in the success of MFC is its design. To date, the most common MFC reactor designs have been single-chamber MFC, double chambers MFC, and stacked MFC configurations. The size of each type of reactor design greatly varies with some MFCs having sizes of a few square centimeters and others having up to a square meter with volumes ranging from milliliters to thousands of liters, respectively. Considerable develop- ments in MFC systems for waste treatment, renewable energy generation and resource recovery have been made in the last two decades, despite critical
challenges of capital cost investment, and low efficiency for large-scale applications are impeding MFC from commercialization. Therefore, improving these technical challenges must pave the way for making economically feasible large-scale MFC.
Further research will suggest reasonable design, and size of reactors for the multi- purpose MFC to efficiently treat domestic wastewater, generate renewable energy and resource recovery.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to the work facilities provided by Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Author details Girum Ayalneh Tiruye
Materials Sciences Program/Department of Chemistry, College of Natural and Computational Sciences, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
*Address all correspondence to: [email protected]
© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
References
[1]Munoz-Cupa C, Hu Y, Xu C, Bassi A.
An overview of microbial fuel cell usage in wastewater treatment, resource recovery and energy production. Science of the Total Environment. 2021;754:
142429. DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.
2020.142429
[2]Gude VG. Wastewater treatment in microbial fuel cells—An overview.
Journal of Cleaner Production. 2016;122:
287-307. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.
02.022
[3]Habermann W, Pommer EH.
Biological fuel cells with sulphide storage capacity. Applied Microbiology Biotechnology. 1991;281:128-133. DOI:
10.1007/BF00180650
[4]Kuntke P,Śmiech KM, Bruning H, Zeeman G, Saakes M, Sleutels THJA, et al. Ammonium recovery and energy production from urine by a microbial fuel cell. Water Research. 2012;46:
2627-2636. DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2012.
02.025
[5]Jiang Y, Yang X, Liang P, Liu P, Huang X. Microbial fuel cell sensors for water quality early warning systems:
Fundamentals, signal resolution, optimization and future challenges.
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 2018;81:292-305.
DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2017.06.099
[6]Logan BE, Hamelers B, Rozendal R, Schröder U, Keller J, Freguia S, et al.
Microbial fuel cells: Methodology and technology. Environmental Science &
Technology. 2006;40:5181-5192.
DOI: 10.1021/es0605016
[7]Pant D, Van Bogaert G, Diels L, Vanbroekhoven K. A review of the substrates used in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) for sustainable energy
production. Bioresource Technology.
2010;101:1533-1543. DOI: 10.1016/j.
biortech.2009.10.017
[8]Zhou M, Wang H, Hassett DJ, Gu T.
Recent advances in microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) for wastewater treatment, bioenergy and bioproducts. Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology.
2013;88:508-518. DOI: 10.1002/jctb.4004 [9]Clauwaert P, Aelterman P, Pham TH, De Schamphelaire L, Carballa M,
Rabaey K, et al. Minimizing losses in bio-electrochemical systems: The road to applications. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. 2008;79:901-913.
DOI: 10.1007/s00253-008-1522-2 [10]Rabaey K, Rodríguez J, Blackall LL, Keller J, Gross P, Batstone D, et al.
Microbial ecology meets
electrochemistry: Electricity-driven and driving communities. The ISME Journal.
2007;1:9-18. DOI: 10.1038/ismej.2007.4 [11]Zhou M, Chi M, Wang H, Jin T.
Anode modification by electrochemical oxidation: A new practical method to improve the performance of microbial fuel cells. Biochemical Engineering Journal. 2012;60:151-155. DOI: 10.1016/
j.bej.2011.10.014
[12]Mara D. Domestic Wastewater Treatment in Developing Countries. In:
Mara D, editor. 1st ed. London:
Earthscan; 2003. ISBN 1844070190 [13]Logan BE, Rabaey K. Conversion of wastes into bioelectricity and chemicals by using microbial
electrochemical technologies. Science (80-.). 2012;337:686-690. DOI: 10.1126/
science.1217412
[14]Rozendal RA, Hamelers HVM, Rabaey K, Keller J, Buisman CJN.
Towards practical implementation of bioelectrochemical wastewater treatment. Trends in Biotechnology.
2008;26:450-459. DOI: 10.1016/j.
tibtech.2008.04.008
[15]Gul H, Raza W, Lee J, Azam M, Ashraf M, Kim KH. Progress in microbial fuel cell technology for wastewater treatment and energy harvesting. Chemosphere. 2021;281:
130828. DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.
2021.130828
[16]Ye Y, Ngo HH, Guo W, Chang SW, Nguyen DD, Liu Y, et al. Effect of organic loading rate on the recovery of nutrients and energy in a dual-chamber microbial fuel cell. Bioresource
Technology. 2019;281:367-373, DOI:
10.1016/j.biortech.2019.02.108
[17]Paucar NE, Sato C. Microbial fuel cell for energy production, nutrient removal and recovery from wastewater:
A review. Processes. 2021;9:1318.
DOI: 10.3390/pr9081318
[18]Verma P, Daverey A, Kumar A, Arunachalam K. Microbial fuel cell—A sustainable approach for simultaneous wastewater treatment and energy recovery. Journal of Water Process Engineering. 2021;40:101768.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jwpe.2020.101768 [19]Christgen B, Scott K, Dolfing J, Head IM, Curtis TP. An evaluation of the performance and economics of membranes and separators in single chamber microbial fuel cells treating domestic wastewater. PLoS One. 2015;
10:1-13. DOI: 10.1371/journal.
pone.0136108
[20]Tan SM, Ong SA, Ho LN, Wong YS, Thung WE, Teoh TP. The reaction of wastewater treatment and power generation of single chamber microbial fuel cell against substrate concentration and anode distributions.
Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering. 2020;18:
793-807. DOI: 10.1007/s40201-020- 00504-w
[21]Flimban SGA, Ismail IMI, Kim T, Oh S-E. Review overview of recent advancements in the microbial fuel cell
from fundamentals to applications, Energies. 2019;12:1-20
[22]DU Z, LI Q , TONG M, LI S, LI H.
Electricity generation using membrane- less microbial fuel cell during
wastewater treatment. Chinese Journal of Chemical Engineering. 2008;16:
772-777. DOI: 10.1016/S1004-9541(08) 60154-8
[23]Logan B, Cheng S, Watson V, Estadt G. Graphite fiber brush anodes for increased power production in air- cathode microbial fuel cells.
Environmental Science & Technology.
2007;41:3341-3346. DOI: 10.1021/
es062644y
[24]Cheng S, Liu H, Logan BE.
Increased performance of single- chamber microbial fuel cells using an improved cathode structure.
Electrochemistry Communications.
2006;8:489-494. DOI: 10.1016/j.
elecom.2006.01.010
[25]He W, Zhang X, Liu J, Zhu X, Feng Y, Logan BE. Microbial fuel cells with an integrated spacer and separate anode and cathode modules.
Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology. 2016;2:186-195.
DOI: 10.1039/c5ew00223k [26]Flimban SGA, Hassan SHA, Rahman MM, Oh SE. The effect of Nafion membrane fouling on the power generation of a microbial fuel cell.
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. 2020;45:13643-13651.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2018.02.097 [27]Min B, Logan BE. Continuous electricity generation from domestic wastewater and organic substrates in a flat plate microbial fuel cell. Environmental Science & Technology. 2004;38:
5809-5814. DOI: 10.1021/es0491026 [28]Ki D, Park J, Lee J, Yoo K. Microbial diversity and population dynamics of activated sludge microbial communities
participating in electricity generation in microbial fuel cells. Water Science and Technology. 2008;58:2195-2201.
DOI: 10.2166/wst.2008.577
[29]Ringeisen BR, Henderson E, Wu PK, Pietron J, Ray R, Little B, et al. High power density from a miniature microbial fuel cell using Shewanella oneidensis DSP10. Environmental Science & Technology. 2006;40:
2629-2634. DOI: 10.1021/es052254w [30]Hashemi J, Samimi A. Steady state electric power generation in up-flow microbial fuel cell using the estimated time span method for bacteria growth domestic wastewater. Biomass and Bioenergy. 2012;45:65-76. DOI: 10.1016/
j.biombioe.2012.05.011
[31]Dessì P, Chatterjee P, Mills S, Kokko M, Lakaniemi AM, Collins G, et al. Power production and microbial community composition in
thermophilic acetate-fed up-flow and flow-through microbial fuel cells.
Bioresource Technology. 2019;294:
122115. DOI: 10.1016/j.biortech.2019.
122115
[32]Ali AEH, Gomaa Ola M, Fathey R, El Kareem HA, Zaid MA. Optimization of double chamber microbial fuel cell for domestic wastewater treatment and electricity production. Ranliao Huaxue Xuebao/Journal of Fuel Chemistry and Technology. 2015;43:1092-1099.
DOI: 10.1016/s1872-5813(15)30032-3 [33]Liang P, Duan R, Jiang Y, Zhang X, Qiu Y, Huang X. One-year operation of 1000-L modularized microbial fuel cell for municipal wastewater treatment.
Water Research. 2018;141:1-8.
DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2018.04.066 [34]Estrada-Arriaga EB, Hernández- Romano J, García-Sánchez L, Guillén Garcés RA, Bahena-Bahena EO, Guadarrama-Pérez O, et al. Domestic wastewater treatment and power generation in continuous flow air-
cathode stacked microbial fuel cell:
Effect of series and parallel
configuration. Journal of Environmental Management. 2018;214:232-241.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.03.007 [35]Li W-W, Yu H-Q, Rittmann BE.
Reuse water pollutants. Nature. 2015;
528:29-31. DOI: 10.1038/528029a [36]Ye Y, Ngo HH, Guo W, Chang SW, Nguyen DD, Liu Y, et al. Microbial fuel cell for nutrient recovery and electricity generation from municipal wastewater under different ammonium
concentrations. Bioresource Technology.
2019;292:121992. DOI: 10.1016/j.bio rtech.2019.121992
[37]Yakar A, Türe C, Türker OC, Vymazal J, Saz Ç. Impacts of various filtration media on wastewater treatment and bioelectric production in up-flow constructed wetland combined with microbial fuel cell (UCW-MFC).
Ecological Engineering. 2018;117:120-132.
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoleng.2018.03.016 [38]Yang Z, Pei H, Hou Q, Jiang L, Zhang L, Nie C. Algal biofilm-assisted microbial fuel cell to enhance domestic wastewater treatment: Nutrient,
organics removal and bioenergy production. Chemical Engineering Journal. 2018;332:277-285. DOI: 10.1016/
j.cej.2017.09.096
[39]Jadhav DA, Ghosh Ray S,
Ghangrekar MM. Third generation in bio-electrochemical system research—A systematic review on mechanisms for recovery of valuable by-products from wastewater. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 2017;76:1022-1031.
DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2017.03.096
[40]Güney K, Weidelener A, Krampe J.
Phosphorus recovery from digested sewage sludge as MAP by the help of metal ion separation. Water Research.
2008;42:4692-4698. DOI: 10.1016/j.
watres.2008.08.016