Urine disinfection and in situ pathogen killing using a Microbial Fuel Cell cascade system

PLoS One. 2017 May 2;12(5):e0176475. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176475. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are emerging as an effective means of treating different types of waste including urine and wastewater. However, the fate of pathogens in an MFC-based system remains unknown, and in this study we investigated the effect of introducing the enteric pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar enteritidis in an MFC cascade system. The MFCs continuously fed with urine showed high disinfecting potential. As part of two independent trials, during which the bioluminescent S. enteritidis strain was introduced into the MFC cascade, the number of viable counts and the level of bioluminescence were reduced by up to 4.43±0.04 and 4.21±0.01 log-fold, respectively. The killing efficacy observed for the MFCs operating under closed-circuit conditions, were higher by 1.69 and 1.72 log-fold reduction than for the open circuit MFCs, in both independent trials. The results indicated that the bactericidal properties of a well performing anode were dependent on power performance and the oxidation-reduction potential recorded for the MFCs. This is the first time that the fate of pathogenic bacteria has been investigated in continuously operating MFC systems.

MeSH terms

  • Bioelectric Energy Sources* / microbiology
  • Disinfection / methods*
  • Humans
  • Luminescent Measurements / methods
  • Salmonella enterica
  • Salmonella enteritidis
  • Urine / microbiology*
  • Wastewater / microbiology
  • Water Purification / methods

Substances

  • Waste Water

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (www.gatesfoundation.org) grant no. OPP1094890. Ioannis Ieropoulos is an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellow (https://www.epsrc.ac.uk), grant number EP/L002132/1. Grzegorz Pasternak is a Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education Fellow (http://www.nauka.gov.pl). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.