Generation of electricity from anaerobically treated leachate using up flow microbial fuel cell

Abstract

Bioenergy is a renewable energy that plays a vital role in today's increasing energy demand. Microbial fuel cell (MFC) concurrently treat the wastewater and produce the energy. Upflow microbial fuel cell (UMFC) was used in this study to generate electrical energy by treating leachate. UMFC was operated at different organic loading rate (OLR) (0.27 – 1.37 gCOD/Ld) for 130 days using activated carbon fibre felt (ACFF) as electrodes. In optimum OLR of 0.64 gCOD/Ld, UMFC accomplished maximum total chemical oxygen demand (TCOD), soluble chemical oxygen demand (SCOD) and total suspended solids (TSS) removal of 84.6%, 88% and 79.2% respectively. The peak coulombic efficiency (CE) of 49.7% was attained at 0.27 gCOD/Ld. UMFC accomplished power density of 106.66 mW/m² along with the voltage production of 702 mV at 0.64 gCOD/Ld OLR. Bacterial community analysis revealed the dominance of proteobacteria (58.9%) followed by firmicutes (40.3%) and bacterioides (3.8%) in UMFC at 0.64 gCOD/Ld OLR. This results shows that UMFC effectively treat leachate wastewater along with the electricity generation.

Keywords

• UMFC
• Leachate
• Activated carbon fibre felt
• Organic loading rate
• Power density