Enhanced Tannery Wastewater Treatment and Electricity Generation in Microbial Fuel Cell by Bacterial Strains Isolated From Tannery Waste

Abstract

Toxic chemical nature of tannery wastewater makes it difficult to be treated by routine biological treatment processes. Microbes, already present in tannery wastewater can adapt to these conditions and degrade the organics in tannery wastewater. In the present contribution, three bacterial electrogenic strains, tolerant to tannery environment, were isolated from soil contaminated with tannery waste and named as BS1, BS2, and BS3. Tannery wastewater was treated with these pure and mixed consortia of three bacterial strains in different microbial fuel cells. Comparative analysis was made by treating the tannery wastewater with foreign microbial consortia (activated sludge inoculum) and with plain wastewater containing only natural habitat microbes, already present in wastewater. Mixed consortia of electrogenic strains gave best results. Up to 10.38mA current and 94.3 per cent of Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) removal was obtained during 30 days of operation.

Application of Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) for Pharmaceutical Wastewater Treatment: An Overview and Future Perspectives

“…MFC technology has been extensively explored in the last decade due to its potential for producing electricity in an ecologically acceptable manner. MFCs are preferable to conventional methods for wastewater treatment because, instead of consuming energy, they use microbial metabolic activities for energy generation during wastewater treatment [9,10]. A typical two-chamber MFC contains an anode chamber, a cathode setup, and a separator or membrane, isolating both anode and cathode, whereas MFCs generate electricity by oxidizing biodegradable waste in the anodic compartment [9].…”

Hazardous Waste Treatment Technologies

“…Mathuriya (Mathuriya, 2014) and 67%, respectively. The combined process, however, removed 98% of TOC and 99% of COD with lower H2O2 consumption.…”

“…It was shown that the presence of phenol did not affect electricity generation, but changes in external resistance resulted in lower produced current and power densities. Microbial structure and abundance on the anode surface was determined.Mathuriya(Mathuriya, 2014) studied the tannery water degradation in MFC. MFCs were inoculated with pure bacterial electrogenic strains and mixed consortia of these strains isolated from soils contaminated with tannery waste.…”

Sustainable Approach for Tannery Wastewater Treatment: Bioelectricity Generation in Bioelectrochemical Systems

“…Highly efficient bioanodes were obtained with stainless steel foam bioanode (80 A/m 2 ) [18] and 67 A/m 2 with layered corrugated carbon bioanode [19] in synthetic medium. In contrast, the bioanode designed to treat real wastewater still faces practical barriers such as low current density [20], especially under complex and toxic environment such tannery wastewater [21,22]. So, further extensive research and developments concerning the formation of efficient bioanodes are urgently required and will help in the treatment of real wastewater and the efficiency of current collection in MFCs for field implementation.…”

“…Mathuriya [21] inoculated tannery wastewater in MFC with three bacterial isolates, mixed consortia of isolates and activated sludge inoculum using plain carbon paper anode at neutral pH. The higher value of current generated 2.88 A/m 2 and 2.25 A/m 2 was obtained with mixed microbial consortia and activated sludge inoculums, respectively [21]. The value of 11.2 A/m 2 obtained in our work was more than three times that provided mixed microbial consortia and five times with active sludge inoculums.…”