Desalination of actual wetland saline water associated with biotreatment of real sewage and bioenergy production in microbial desalination cell

The microbial desalination cell (MDC) can be considered as a great promising technique for the production of clean water due to the potential energy saving through the desalination process. This study assesses for the first time the desalination potential of actual wetland saline water simultaneously with biotreatment of real domestic wastewater and bioenergy generation in a continuous flow triple-compartments MDC. Two types of membranes were used in the MDC, the cation exchange membrane (CEM) and anion exchange membrane (AEM) to separate the three chambers. The results demonstrated complete removal of organic matter from real domestic wastewater. Maximum observed desalination efficiency of the actual wetland saline water achieved 93.7% with power generation and columbic efficiency of 527 mW/m(2) and 31.14%, compared to 373 mW/m(2) and 44.4%, respectively observed with synthetically prepared saline water. The observed promising results in this study highly encourages the application of the suggested approach for desalination of wetland saline waters.