Construction and application of a 1-liter upflow-stacked microbial desalination cell

Yi Wang; Anlin Xu; Tao Cui; Jingjing Zhang; Hongxia Yu; Weiqing Han; Jinyou Shen; Jiansheng Li; Xiuyun Sun; Lianjun Wang

doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.126028

Construction and application of a 1-liter upflow-stacked microbial desalination cell

Chemosphere. 2020 Jun:248:126028. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.126028. Epub 2020 Jan 27.

Authors

Yi Wang¹, Anlin Xu², Tao Cui¹, Jingjing Zhang¹, Hongxia Yu³, Weiqing Han⁴, Jinyou Shen¹, Jiansheng Li¹, Xiuyun Sun¹, Lianjun Wang⁵

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Jiangsu Province for Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China.
² School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, China.
³ College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Jiangsu Province for Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China. Electronic address: hwqnjust@aliyun.com.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Jiangsu Province for Chemical Pollution Control and Resources Reuse, School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China. Electronic address: wanglj@njust.edu.cn.

PMID: 32018109
DOI: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2020.126028

Abstract

As increasing demand of global reuse water, microbial desalination cell (MDC) is developed as a potential desalination approach to drive ion migration and separation through biodegradation without any additional energy. A novel, efficient, stable reactor coupled stacked MDC with upflow MDC was constructed, which was named as upflow-stacked MDC (USMDC). Compared with the traditional stacked MDC and upflow MDC, the desalination and generation performance of the USMDC was evaluated. Results showed that, after 24 h, the desalination ratio of USMDC can reach 91.9% when the external resistance was 1.5 Ω, which was 1.18 and 1.48 times higher than SMDC and UMDC, respectively. The long-term performance of the desalination efficiency was tested, which was maintained at 87.2-96.0% and stable for consecutive 120 days. Then, it was also the investigated that the relationship between desalination rate and external resistance during every period. The USMDC produced a maximum power density of 32.91 W m^-3. In addition, the difference of current density between USMDC and SMDC indicates the turbulence generated by cylindrical structure could effectively decrease the internal resistance. It was also corroborated that salt concentration gradient and bipolar electrodialysis would decline the charge transfer efficiency. Accordingly, USMDC was verified having the superior desalination performance thus providing the possibility for application in wastewater reuse.

Keywords: Desalination; Microbial desalination cell; Upflow-stacked; Wastewater reuse.

MeSH terms

Biodegradation, Environmental
Bioelectric Energy Sources
Equipment Design
Salinity
Sodium Chloride
Wastewater
Water Purification / instrumentation*
Water Purification / methods*

Substances

Waste Water
Sodium Chloride