Generation of Electricity and Sludge Reduction in a Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

In the last few years, the attractiveness of renewable energy production from waste has increased attention for the use of microbial fuel cells. Microbial fuel cell (MFC) has a set-up which generates electrical energy from the biochemical energy released by the catabolic reactions of microbial growth. An MFC system, equipped with two chambers having chromium-nickel plate electrodes, was used to investigate the electricity generation potential in parallel to sludge reduction and carbon removal. In the first stage of this study, activated sludge was cultivated for 1 month in a batch reactor prior to seeding into MFC. In the second stage, a lab-scale two- chambered MFC system was constructed. In the monitoring stage, the operation of MFC was examined in 2 different set of experiments, where MFC voltage generation (V) and digestion of sludge were recorded. Sludge reduction in MFC was compared with that of an aerobic sludge digester based on the decrease of volatile suspended solids (VSS) and filtered COD (SCOD). Experimental results showed higher SCOD removal efficiency in the aerobic batch reactor (41.2% and 42.7%) compared to MFC system (32% and 32%) during Run I and Run II, respectively. The observed decrease in VSS was 31.5% and 30.7% in the MFC system, 51.8% and 53.9% in the batch aerobic reactor during Run I and Run II, respectively. The last stage was conducted to observe electrical parameters. Experimental findings in this study show that, MFC performance is comparable to that of an aerobic sludge digester with the additional benefit of electrical energy generation.

Keywords

• sewage sludge
• sludge reduction
• cod removal
• micobial fuel cells
• electricity generation

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