IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jeners/v8y2015i12p12416-14077d60532.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strategies for Reducing the Start-up Operation of Microbial Electrochemical Treatments of Urban Wastewater

Author

Listed:
  • Zulema Borjas

    (IMDEAWATER Institute, Scientific-Technological Park of Alcalá, Madrid 28805, Spain)

  • Juan Manuel Ortiz

    (Institute of Electrochemistry, University of Alicante, Alicante 03690, Spain)

  • Antonio Aldaz

    (Institute of Electrochemistry, University of Alicante, Alicante 03690, Spain)

  • Juan Feliu

    (Institute of Electrochemistry, University of Alicante, Alicante 03690, Spain)

  • Abraham Esteve-Núñez

    (IMDEAWATER Institute, Scientific-Technological Park of Alcalá, Madrid 28805, Spain
    Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Alcalá, Madrid 28871, Spain)

Abstract

Microbial electrochemical technologies (METs) constitute the core of a number of emerging technologies with a high potential for treating urban wastewater due to a fascinating reaction mechanism—the electron transfer between bacteria and electrodes to transform metabolism into electrical current. In the current work, we focus on the model electroactive microorganism Geobacter sulfurreducens to explore both the design of new start-up procedures and electrochemical operations. Our chemostat-grown plug and play cells, were able to reduce the start-up period by 20-fold while enhancing chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal by more than 6-fold during this period. Moreover, a filter-press based bioreactor was successfully tested for both acetate-supplemented synthetic wastewater and real urban wastewater. This proof-of-concept pre-pilot treatment included a microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) followed in time by a microbial fuel cell (MFC) to finally generate electrical current of ca. 20 A·m −2 with a power of 10 W·m −2 while removing 42 g COD day −1 ·m −2 . The effective removal of acetate suggests a potential use of this modular technology for treating acetogenic wastewater where Geobacter sulfurreducens outcompetes other organisms.

Suggested Citation

  • Zulema Borjas & Juan Manuel Ortiz & Antonio Aldaz & Juan Feliu & Abraham Esteve-Núñez, 2015. "Strategies for Reducing the Start-up Operation of Microbial Electrochemical Treatments of Urban Wastewater," Energies, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-14, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:12:p:12416-14077:d:60532
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/12/12416/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/12/12416/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kong, Fanying & Ren, Hong-Yu & Pavlostathis, Spyros G. & Nan, Jun & Ren, Nan-Qi & Wang, Aijie, 2020. "Overview of value-added products bioelectrosynthesized from waste materials in microbial electrosynthesis systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    2. Renata Toczyłowska-Mamińska & Karolina Szymona & Patryk Król & Karol Gliniewicz & Katarzyna Pielech-Przybylska & Monika Kloch & Bruce E. Logan, 2018. "Evolving Microbial Communities in Cellulose-Fed Microbial Fuel Cell," Energies, MDPI, vol. 11(1), pages 1-12, January.
    3. Bishwambhar Mishra & Sunita Varjani & Gopalakrishnan Kumar & Mukesh Kumar Awasthi & Sanjeev Kumar Awasthi & Raveendran Sindhu & Parameswaran Binod & Eldon R Rene & Zengqiang Zhang, 2021. "Microbial approaches for remediation of pollutants: Innovations, future outlook, and challenges," Energy & Environment, , vol. 32(6), pages 1029-1058, September.
    4. Kumar, Gopalakrishnan & Bakonyi, Péter & Zhen, Guangyin & Sivagurunathan, Periyasamy & Koók, László & Kim, Sang-Hyoun & Tóth, Gábor & Nemestóthy, Nándor & Bélafi-Bakó, Katalin, 2017. "Microbial electrochemical systems for sustainable biohydrogen production: Surveying the experiences from a start-up viewpoint," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 589-597.
    5. Wenguo Wu & Hao Niu & Dayun Yang & Shi-Bin Wang & Jiefu Wang & Jia Lin & Chaoyi Hu, 2019. "Controlled Layer-By-Layer Deposition of Carbon Nanotubes on Electrodes for Microbial Fuel Cells," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-16, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:8:y:2015:i:12:p:12416-14077:d:60532. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.