Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) remediation activity of marine sediments sampled at a dismissed industrial site: What opportunities?

SMFC as a tool for the removal of hydrocarbons and metals in the marine environment: a concise research update

“…Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) represent an emerging technology whose application can range from industrial and municipal effluents treatment to water desalination, from the production of commodity chemicals and energy vectors to CO 2 reuse (Santoro et al 2017;Ghangrekar and Chatterjee 2017;Kadier et al 2016;Avignone-Rossa and Nastro et al 2019). BESs have the potential to reduce the environmental impacts of solid, liquid waste and agricultural systems management while contributing to energy saving by means of electric power and/or energy vectors production (Corbella et al 2017;Li et al 2018;Chandrasekhar et al 2017;Florio et al 2019;De Vrieze et al 2018;Nastro et al 2015;Flagiello et al 2021). BESs include microbial electrolysis cells (MECs), microbial electrosynthesis cells (MES), microbial desalination cells (MDCs), all requiring an external source of energy, and microbial fuel cells (MFCs) which usually do not require any external energy input.…”

“…It is an essential step to take necessary actions to reduce the low power densities in SMFCs by altering the existing reactor design and reduce the losses affected by activation, ohmic, and concentration overpotentials (Nastro et al 2015). It is essential to prevent the losses caused by unnecessary reactions, such as direct oxidation of the substrate (PAHs or metals) in the presence of O 2 near the anode electrode, which will reduce the overall efficiency (power generation and pollutant remediation) of the SMFC.…”

“…Since a few decades ago, the environmental pollution caused by PAHs and heavy metals raised a growing interest among the world scientific community (Boehm 1964 ), mainly because of their high toxicity, low-degradability, bioaccumulation, and biomagnification along the food chains (Furness 2018 ; Shimada 2006 ; Khan et al 2004 ; Nastro et al 2014 ; Nastro et al 2019 ). In order to solve the problem of marine pollution, different remediation techniques were developed over time.…”

“…MFCs proved to be useful tools for the remediation of both water and sediments contaminated with heavy metals and/or hydrocarbons, with significant results even in view of an in-field application (Venkata Mohan and Chandrasekhar 2011b ; Muhammad et al 2016 ; Gambino et al 2017 ; Wang et al 2015 ; Nastro et al 2019 ). When applied to environmental pollution treatment, the main outputs of MFCs consist in remediated water/sediment/soil and electric power.…”

Bioelectrochemical system-mediated waste valorization

“…Although some bacteria's ability to engender electric current was first described over 100 years ago, this phenomenon did not begin to attract serious attention from scientists and engineers until the beginning of the present century [11,20,21]. The progress made over the last decade in the areas of bio-electrochemistry and BES has significantly led to the shift from the bench scale (laboratory) to the pilot-scale studies [22]. So, commercial expansion gives the impression to be getting closer [20].…”