Stainless steel and carbon brushes as high-performance anodes for energy production and nutrient recovery using the microbial nutrient recovery system

Kanwal Shahid, Deepika Lakshmi Ramasamy, Sampo Haapasaari, Mika Sillanpää and Arto Pihlajamäki

Energy, 2021, vol. 233, issue C

Abstract: Microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology allows renewable energy production from the decomposition of organic matter present in wastewater. This technology, however, poses challenges that hinder scaling up of its usage in practical implementation. Also, resource recovery from the available waste sources is attracting attention due to the immense amount of valuable nutrients present in the wastewater. Herein, the present study focuses on investigating high-performance anodes, that is, using a stainless-steel brush (SSB) and carbon brush (CB) to accommodate the MFC in terms of energy production, leading to transformation into a microbial nutrient recovery system (MNRS) for nutrients’ recovery from wastewater. The present novel SSB anode system generated a stable voltage of ∼0.4V and a maximum power density of ∼400 mW/m2 whereas CB anode system produced the voltage and maximum power density of ∼0.5 V and ∼800 mW/m2, respectively. Besides, using the MNRS process, recovery of nutrients in terms of PO43− (80–83.4% for CB-MNRS and 60–69.5% for SSB-MNRS when using feed PO43− concentration of 10–20 ppm) and NH4+ (63–80.64% for the CB-MNRS and 52–70% for the SSB-MNRS when using feed NH4+ with a concentration of 10–20 ppm) was achieved.

Keywords: Microbial fuel cell; Microbial nutrient recovery system; Stainless steel brush anode; Carbon brush anode; Air cathode; Bioenergy production (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221014614
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:233:y:2021:i:c:s0360544221014614

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.121213

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 ().