Recent progress in microbial fuel cells using substrates from diverse sources

Jayesh M Sonawane; Radhakrishnan Mahadevan; Ashok Pandey; Jesse Greener

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e12353

Recent progress in microbial fuel cells using substrates from diverse sources

Heliyon. 2022 Dec 16;8(12):e12353. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e12353. eCollection 2022 Dec.

Authors

Jayesh M Sonawane^{1

2}, Radhakrishnan Mahadevan¹, Ashok Pandey^{3

4}, Jesse Greener^{2

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto M5S 3E5, Canada.
² Département de Chimie, Faculté des Sciences et de génie, Université Laval, Québec City, QC, Canada.
³ Centre for Innovation and Translational Research, CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, 226 001, India.
⁴ Centre for Energy and Environmental Sustainability, Lucknow, 226 029, India.
⁵ CHU de Québec, Centre de recherche, Université Laval, 10 rue de l'Espinay, Québec, QC, Canada.

Abstract

Increasing untreated environmental outputs from industry and the rising human population have increased the burden of wastewater and other waste streams on the environment. The most prevalent wastewater treatment methods include the activated sludge process, which requires aeration and is, therefore, energy and cost-intensive. The current trend towards a circular economy facilitates the recovery of waste materials as a resource. Along with the amount, the complexity of wastewater is increasing day by day. Therefore, wastewater treatment processes must be transformed into cost-effective and sustainable methods. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) use electroactive microbes to extract chemical energy from waste organic molecules to generate electricity via waste treatment. This review focuses use of MFCs as an energy converter using wastewater from various sources. The different substrate sources that are evaluated include industrial, agricultural, domestic, and pharmaceutical types. The article also highlights the effect of operational parameters such as organic load, pH, current, and concentration on the MFC output. The article also covers MFC functioning with respect to the substrate, and the associated performance parameters, such as power generation and wastewater treatment matrices, are given. The review also illustrates the success stories of various MFC configurations. We emphasize the significant measures required to fill in the gaps related to the effect of substrate type on different MFC configurations, identification of microbes for use as biocatalysts, and development of biocathodes for the further improvement of the system. Finally, we shortlisted the best performing substrates based on the maximum current and power, Coulombic efficiency, and chemical oxygen demand removal upon the treatment of substrates in MFCs. This information will guide industries that wish to use MFC technology to treat generated effluent from various processes.

Keywords: Chemical oxygen demand; Coulombic efficiency; Microbial fuel cells; Substrate; Wastewater treatment.

Publication types

Review