Agricultural Waste and Wastewater as Feedstock for Bioelectricity Generation Using Microbial Fuel Cells: Recent Advances

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a significant accumulation of waste in the environment, and it is expected that this accumulation may increase in the years to come. Waste disposal has massive effects on the environment and can cause serious environmental problems. Thus, the development of a waste treatment system is of major importance. Agro-industrial wastewater and waste residues are mainly rich in organic substances, lignocellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and they have a relatively high amount of energy. As a result, an effective agro-waste treatment system has several benefits, including energy recovery and waste stabilization. To reduce the impact of the consumption of fossil energy sources on our planet, the exploitation of renewable sources has been relaunched. All over the world, efforts have been made to recover energy from agricultural waste, considering global energy security as the final goal. To attain this objective, several technologies and recovery methods have been developed in recent years. The microbial fuel cell (MFC) is one of them. This review describes the power generation using various types of agro-industrial wastewaters and agricultural residues utilizing MFC. It also highlights the techno-economics and lifecycle assessment of MFC, its commercialization, along with challenges.

Single Cell Protein Production through Multi Food-Waste Substrate Fermentation

“…From a chemical point of view, food waste is mainly composed by carbohydrate polymers such as starch, proteins, lipids, cellulose, and other microelements [7][8][9][10]. Due to this composition, it is classified as a low cost, high potency second generation feedstock [1], and usable as a substrate for microbial fermentation for bioconversion into value added products, such as enzymes, feed additives, biofuels, animal feeds as well as other useful chemicals or products, food grade pigments, and single cell protein (SCP), enhancing food security and environmentally sustainable development [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

The Effects of Wheat and Rice Straw as a Substrate on the Treatment of Reverse Osmosis Reject Wastewater in a Single Chamber Microbial Fuel Cell

“…Because cellulose degradation and fermentation to products that can be oxidised by exoelectrogens is a key stumbling block in converting cellulose to electricity. Special attention must be paid to improving cellulose degradation and fermentation to products that can be oxidised by exoelectrogens [25–28] . Electroactive microorganisms have a hard time metabolising raw rice and wheat straw.…”

“…Special attention must be paid to improving cellulose degradation and fermentation to products that can be oxidised by exoelectrogens. [25][26][27][28] Electroactive microorganisms have a hard time metabolising raw rice and wheat straw. To breakdown the lignocellulosic biomass and release the carbohydrates products, a range of pretreatment procedures could be integrated.…”

Microbial Fuel Cell United with Other Existing Technologies for Enhanced Power Generation and Efficient Wastewater Treatment

“…MFCs have been amalgamated with other existing technologies to overcome their limitations, as mentioned above [9]. In this context, numerous interesting hybrid MFC-based sewage treatment methods have been developed in recent decades, some of which show tremendous potential for future applications [10,11]. Hybrid approaches (i.e., combining two or more processes to establish a novel method that integrates the particular qualities of the original techniques) have been emerging.…”