Microbial fuel cells and osmotic membrane bioreactors have mutual benefits for wastewater treatment and energy production

Abstract

This study demonstrates that microbial fuel cells (MFCs) and osmotic membrane bioreactors (OMBRs) can be mutually beneficial when integrated together for wastewater treatment. When connecting MFCs with OMBRs, the solute buildup increased conductivity and buffer capacity, which greatly increased MFC power density from 3 W/m(3) up to 11.5 W/m(3). In turn, the MFCs conditioned and reduced sludge production and therefore reduced forward osmosis (FO) membrane fouling. The MFC-OMBR equipped with new thin-film composite (TFC) membrane showed excellent organic (>95%) and phosphorus removal (>99%) and therefore maintained effluent sCOD below 20 mg/L. However, the nitrogen removal was limited due to the negative surface charge of the thin-film composite membrane and solution chemistry, which led to higher flux of ammonium toward the OMBR draw solution. Further studies are needed to improve nitrogen removal, reduce fouling, and optimize system integration.

Effects of temperature on wastewater treatment in an affordable microbial fuel cell-adsorption hybrid system

“…Nevertheless, standalone treatment system has limitation such as less wastewater treatment efficiency as compared to the MFC hybrid system [7]. Much studies had demonstrated the ability of hybrid MFCs in removing various types of pollutants present in the wastewater such as chemical oxygen demand (COD) [8][9][10], phosphorus [11], dye [12,13], suspended solids (SS) [10], total nitrogen (TN) [14], ammonia nitrogen (NH 3 À ÀN) [15,16], and so on. Majority of the effective pollutants removal were done by integrating MFC with other unit operation or processes.…”

Resource recovery by osmotic bioelectrochemical systems towards sustainable wastewater treatment

“…This cooperation can also create mutual benefits that strengthen each of the unit in this system ( Figure 2.4). As mentioned earlier, an OMBR and an MFC could benefit each other in terms of enhancing electricity generation and reducing membrane fouling (Hou et al 2016). Enhancing electricity…”

“…An example of a coupled OsBES is to connect an MEC to an FO unit for recovering ammonium from a synthetic wastewater and then applying the recovered ammonium as a draw in the subsequent FO process He 2014, Qin et al 2016b). In an osmotic membrane bioreactor (OMBR) -MFC system, the membrane fouling in the OMBR was alleviated by the MFC treatment, and the electricity generation in the MFC was enhanced due to increased solution conductivity after the OMBR treatment (Hou et al 2016). FO-based processes have also been studied as pre-treatment before BES.…”

“…In an osmotic membrane bioreactor (OMBR) -MFC system, the membrane fouling in the OMBR was alleviated by the MFC treatment, and the electricity generation in the MFC was enhanced due to increased solution conductivity after the OMBR treatment (Figure 2.3F) (Hou et al 2016). FO-based processes have also been studied as pre-treatment before BES.…”

“…For example, an OsMFC achieved COD removal efficiency of 82.5 ± 9.0 % and recovered up to 70% of water (Ge et al 2013b). An MFC-OMBR system exhibited excellent removal of organic (>95%) and phosphorus (>99%) and could maintain an effluent COD concentration below 20 mg L -1 (Hou et al 2016). …”