Evaluation on the electricity generation using membrane-less fixed-bed upflow microbial fuel cell

A simple modification on commonly employed biological wastewater treatment process into microbial fuel cell (MFC) could become value added to the treatment unit for removing organic contaminant. The objective of this study was to evaluate the developed membrane-less fixed-bed upflow MFC for generating electricity from synthetic wastewater. The bioreactors were fabricated using cylinder column with 4.5 cm D x 25 cm H and gravel was loaded into the bioreactors for biofilm development. Carbon felts were used as anode and cathode at lower bed and upper bed, respectively, in the bioreactors. The effects of feeding pattern of wastewater, organic loading, biofilm on the cathode, pH at aerobic region of bioreactor, and concentration of KCl on the performance of the MFCs for power generation were evaluated. The optimum power output from the developed MFC was about 28 mW/m(2) with 6.28 g/L of sodium acetate as carbon source, pH 6.5-6.6, and 9.5 h of HRT.