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Environmental Business Review | Wednesday, November 09, 2022
Wastewater treatment and energy production through microbial fuel cells are two important industrial sectors with room for sustainability and green certifications progress.
Fremont, CA: Recently, there has been a development in research into the industrial applications of microbial fuel cells. These creative devices induce electricity through the oxidation of organic matter, achieved through exoelectrogenic bacteria. The bacteria held on to the anode, perhaps linked to the oxygen reduction reaction at the fuel cell cathode. This yields electricity.
The laboratory and bench-scale reactors perform the most recent microbial fuel cell research. Furthermore, research primarily concentrates on synthetic wastewater, which does not correctly represent real-world wastewater. The requirement for pilot-scale presentations of microbial fuel cells that treat real waste streams is increasing. If the technology gets commercialized, it must indicate sufficient performance.
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Scalability is an important challenge in the design of microbial fuel cells for industrial applications. This is because of the need to attain dense electrode packing while improving the reactor's capacity to amplify performance. If the specific surface area of the electrode is not maintained during scale-up, volumetric power densities suffer greatly. Conversely, maintaining adequate electrode packing necessitates utilizing electrodes that can resist high water pressure to avoid flooding the cathode and its chamber.
Previous pilot-scale microbial fuel cells were only capable of aerating wastewater. As it devours half of the energy used in the treatment plant, this process is inappropriate for wastewater treatment and energy recovery.
Direct air cathodes can support microbial fuel cells and use less energy, but research into this technology in microbial fuel cells has been complex. For example, leakage and flooding of the cathode and cathode chamber occur when the reactor volume and electrode dimensions increase. Also, the pilot project's capital costs were expanded dramatically because the biggest direct-air cathode reactor used expensive precious metal catalysts.
Over the years, a novel cathode that utilizes activated carbon in a window-pane architecture with the cathodes included in a stainless-steel frame has developed. The cathode could resist higher water levels than conventional cathodes and produced a maximum power density comparable to smaller laboratory-scale microbial fuel cells.
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