Microbial fuel cells for energy production from wastewaters: the way toward practical application

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Microbial fuel cells for energy production from wastewaters: the way toward practical application

Challenges of MFCs for real-world sustainable wastewater treatment

Abstract

Much energy is stored in wastewaters. How to efficiently capture this energy is of great significance for meeting the world’s energy needs, reducing wastewater handling costs and increasing the sustainability of wastewater treatment. The micro- bial fuel cell (MFC) is a recently developed biotechnology for electrical energy recovery from the organic pollutants in wastewaters.

MFCs hold great promise for sustainable wastewater treatment. However, at present there is still much research needed before the MFC technique can be practically applied in the real world. In this review, we analyze the opportunities and key challenges for MFCs to achieve sustainability in wastewater treatment.

We especially discuss the problems and challenges for scaling up the MFC systems; this is the most critical issue for realizing the practical implementation of this technique. In order to achieve sustainability, MFCs may also be combined with other techniques to yield high effluent quality or to recover more commercial value (i.e., by producing energy-rich or high value chemicals) from wastewaters.

However, research in this area is still on-going and many problems need to be settled before real-world application. Advances are required in respect of efficiency, economic feasibility, system stability, and reliability.

Introduction

Sustainable treatment and utilization of wastewater are receiving intensive attention due to the growing shortage of freshwater resources, depletion of fossil fuel, and environmental pollution. At present, most traditional wastewater treatment processes con- sume energy and cause environmental problems (Li et al., 2014).

For instance, treatment of organic-rich wastewater consumes about 3% (1.5×1010 W) of all electrical power produced in the USA each year (McCarty et al., 2011). Considerable amounts of greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide, carbon di- oxide, and other volatile substances are released into the atmosphere.

Furthermore, large quantities of ex- cess sludge are produced during the treatment, dis- posal of which is energy and economically costly (McCarty et al., 2011).

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