Performance of a combined system of microbial fuel cell and membrane bioreactor: wastewater treatment, sludge reduction, energy recovery and membrane fouling

Abstract

A novel combined system of sludge microbial fuel cell (S-MFC) stack and membrane bioreactor (MBR) was proposed in this study. The non-consumed sludge in the MBR sludge-fed S-MFC was recycled to the MBR. In the combined system, the COD and ammonia treatment efficiencies were more than 90% and the sludge reduction was 5.1% higher than that of the conventional MBR. It's worth noting that the energy recovery and fouling mitigation were observed in the combined system. In the single S-MFC, about 75 mg L(-1) COD could be translated to electricity during one cycle. The average voltage and maximum power production of the single S-MFC were 430 mV and 51 mWm(-2), respectively. Additionally, the combined system was able to mitigate membrane fouling by the sludge modification. Except for the content decrease (22%), S-MFC destroyed simple aromatic proteins and tryptophan protein-like substances in loosely bound extracellular polymeric substances (LB-EPS). These results indicated that effective wastewater treatment, sludge reduction, energy recovery and membrane fouling mitigation could be obtained in the combined system.

Keywords: Energy recovery; Loosely bound EPS (LB-EPS); Membrane bioreactor (MBR); Membrane fouling; Microbial fuel cell (MFC).