A glance of coupled water and wastewater treatment systems based on microbial fuel cells

Yulong Huang, Yaqian Zhao*, Cheng Tang, Asheesh Kumar Yadav, Rouzbeh Abbassi, Peiying Kang, Yamei Cai, Ang Liu, Anran Yang, Min Li

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

[Graphical abstract presents]

Microbial fuel cell (MFC) is a variant of the bioelectrochemical system that uses microorganisms as biocatalysts to generate bioenergy by oxidizing organic matter. Due to its two-prong feature of simultaneously treating wastewater and generating electricity, it has drawn extensive interest by scientific communities around the world. However, the pollution purifying capacity and power production of MFC at the laboratory scale have tended to remain steady, and there have been no reports of a performance breakthrough. In recent years, research related to MFC has demonstrated a new trend, namely the coupling of MFC with other wastewater treatment technologies to create a 1 + 1 > 2 impact. MFC-based coupling/hybrid technologies such as sediment MFC (SMFC), constructed wetland MFC (CW-MFC), membrane bioreactor MFC (MBR-MFC), microbial desalination cell (MDC), and MFC coupled nutrient recovery technology, etc. have been increasingly studied. Therefore, this review aims to overview these already-emerging MFC coupling technologies and explores their development trends and challenges to serve as a guide for determining priority research topics in this area. Among these MFC-based coupling/hybrid technologies, literature seems to support that CW-MFC is a good example of integrated MFC technology where CWs are already employed at the field level for wastewater treatment application. MFC-Electroflocculation and MBR-MFCs are typical emerged hybrid systems to own promising potential. However, scalability and practical application potential of these integrated technologies are the challenge towards their reality except for ideal performance in small scale trials.

Original languageEnglish
Article number164599
Pages (from-to)1-16
Number of pages16
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume892
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Sept 2023

Keywords

  • Microbial fuel cell
  • Coupled system
  • Hybrid system
  • Wastewater treatment
  • Bioelectrochemistry

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