Study Of Performance Of Double-chamber Microbial Fuel Cell In Treating Wastewater

Resources and environmental problems is becoming the two major crisesthat human have to face with the development, especially the energy and waterpollution problems. The microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology can produceelectricity when treating the wastewater andsolve the above two major crises,which is a new way of sewage treatment and recycle.This paper described the progress of MFC technology and researched theMFC used in sewage treatment, when found that the current study of thistechnology for water quality factors research was less; the existing study for thedouble-chamber MFC mainly focused on the anode chamber, which lack thedevelopment of the cathode chamber; operating conditions of double-chamberMFC reactor was not enough. Response to this situation, constructeddouble-chamber MFC reactor, the following study was produced.Completed the MFC device startupwith the simulated sewage, and comparedthe starting characteristics, found that the start rate with short circuit connectionwas higher than with external resistor, and the anaerobic sludge acclimationcould also shorten the startup time. This paper investigated the effect of waterquality factors on thecapacity of producing electricity and water treatment.Found that non-fermented organic matter sodium acetate as a substrate weresuperior to the fermented organic glucosein the stability of the electricityproduction, battery performance and coulombic efficiency.Sodium acetate itselfhad the ability to maintain a stable pH, and could operation with the PBS, whilethe glucose matrix was better in the PBS concentration of0.05mol/L. The higherpH would help improve the effect of producing electricity, and its effectis mainlyin the electromotive force increased, the influence of producing electricityefficiency with the substrate of glucose by initial pH was larger. CODdegradation rate with the substrate of sodium acetate was not effected largely bythe initial pH, while that of the glucose substrate was effected by the initial pHlargely. In the anode chamber, in the higher substrate concentration, the CODdegradation rate correspond with the0level reaction kinetics, indicating that thequantity of anode microbial became a major limiting factor of COD degradationreaction.The running performance of domestic sewage in MFC device wascomparatively investigated, the study found that the performance of domesticsewage in electricity production and degradation of pollutants were similar to the simulated wastewater with non-fermented organic sodium acetate. Examined thedouble-chamber series MFC with anode anaerobic/aerobic cathode sewagetreatment process, found that the bio-cathode enrichment was completedin thecathode chamber after16days in the process of continuous operation, after theenrichment of bio-cathode, the electromotive force, maximum power density andcoulombic efficiency were increased by1times,3.6times and0.5times, andpollutant degradation effect was slightly increased. The operating parameters ofdouble-chamber serial mode were investigated, the study found that, there was nosignificant difference with the different parameters of the residence time inelectromotive force, the total internal resistance and the maximum output powerdensity, and as the residence time increased, coulomb efficiency, COD andammonia removal were improved; when aeration rate was low, the cathodeaeration rate increasedthe battery performance and pollutant degradationefficiency, but the excessive amount of aeration had no good for improvingelectricity and water treatment rate.