Optimizing a concentration of NaCl and 2Na2CO3∙3H2O with microbial desalination cell from the usage of UI lake water

Abstract

Microbial Desalination Cell (MDC) is one of a Bio Electrochemical technology and also modification technology of Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC), MDC is a method that desalinate a sea water. In the use of this MDC system, the bio electrode that use is from coconut shell charcoal. The use of charcoal as Bio Electrode because it has a low cost as well as environmentally friendly, and charcoal doesn’t have some toxic properties. Another problem besides the use of bio electrode, is the imbalance between the pH and the chamber becomes another obstacle to the MDC system and the impact of some approaches leads to increased cost of capital and operational costs. In order to overcome these barriers by cost, Lake UI is used as the substrate and Sodium percarbonate (SP or 2Na2CO3∙3H2O) also used as a natural buffered electrolyte. Based on the results of variations of SP concentration, best concentration of SP was at 0.15 M (SR=15.14%), concentration NaCl at 35 g/L were able to reduce the mass of 3.626 g to 3.077 g with salinity 30.77 g/L.