A freestanding carbon submicro fiber sponge as high-efficient bioelectrochemical anode for wastewater energy recovery and treatment

Ting Xu, Jianan Song, Weichen Lin, Boya Fu, Xingguo Guo, Xia Huang, Hui Wu and Xiaoyuan Zhang

Applied Energy, 2021, vol. 281, issue C, No S0306261920313763

Abstract: Microbial fuel cells (MFCs), as a typical kind of microbial electrochemical technologies (METs), can achieve energy recovery and wastewater treatment. Microbial adhesion on electrodes directly affects microbe-electrode interactions, determining the performance of electricity generation and organic degradation. The anode with suitable structure and operation mode can reduce the limitation of fiber diameter-structure-interface trade-off to enhance microbe-electrode interaction. Here, we fabricated a carbon submicro fiber sponge with fiber diameter close to the size of electrogenic microorganism and operated it in filtration mode to greatly improve energy conversion. The carbon submicro fiber sponge exhibits a superior current yield of 17.4 A m−2 in the polarization curve with high electrochemical activity in MFC, which is 74% higher than that of the commonly used carbon fiber cloth anode. A higher chemical oxygen demand removal rate of 2.9 kg m−3 d−1 is obtained with this novel anode (1.3-fold that of the benchmark). The linkage mechanism of electricity generation and organic degradation is analyzed. Moreover, a long-term stability is demonstrated with excellent current production after the operation over 2 years. Our results indicate that this carbon fiber sponge has remarkable application potential in microbial electrochemical technologies for energy recovery from wastewater.

Keywords: Wastewater energy recovery; Carbon submicro fiber sponge; High stability; Microbe-electrode interaction; Recirculation operation mode (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261920313763
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:281:y:2021:i:c:s0306261920313763

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115913

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().