Microbial desalination cells for water purification and power generation: A critical review

Muhammad Tawalbeh, Amani Al-Othman, Karnail Singh, Ikram Douba, Dania Kabakebji and Malek Alkasrawi

Energy, 2020, vol. 209, issue C

Abstract: The modern society’s sustainable development and the ever-increasing population growth are facing the serious challenge of shortage in water resources. The solution to this global problem needs collective efforts at multiple levels and one of them could be finding new methods of clean water production. In this regard, microbial desalination cells (MDCs) have emerged as a promising technology that has the potential to help address this problem. This work reviews the recent developments in MDC technologies as well as the current research work being done in this area. This paper also presents recent advances in membranes, cell design and the cells’ capability of being integrated with other desalination systems to enhance desalination capacity and power production. Attention is also paid to the various materials and components of MDC systems while highlighting the advances in each of these categories. Furthermore, economic and environmental assessments are made to show various challenges in the application and reliability of this technology. The results of this review show that the main challenge in MDC is the feasibility of its large-scale implementation. It further shows that more efforts are needed to improve its efficiency in power generation to make it a viable technology.

Keywords: Microbial desalination cells; Microbial fuel cells; Wastewater treatment; Desalination; Power generation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220316017
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:energy:v:209:y:2020:i:c:s0360544220316017

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.118493

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

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