Implementation of a Sulfide–Air Fuel Cell Coupled to a Sulfate-Reducing Biocathode for Elemental Sulfur Recovery

Enric Blázquez, David Gabriel, Juan Antonio Baeza, Albert Guisasola, Pablo Ledezma and Stefano Freguia
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Enric Blázquez: GENOCOV Research Group, Department of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
David Gabriel: GENOCOV Research Group, Department of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
Juan Antonio Baeza: GENOCOV Research Group, Department of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
Albert Guisasola: GENOCOV Research Group, Department of Chemical, Biological and Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193 Barcelona, Spain
Pablo Ledezma: Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia
Stefano Freguia: Advanced Water Management Centre, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 11, 1-11

Abstract: Bio-electrochemical systems (BES) are a flexible biotechnological platform that can be employed to treat several types of wastewaters and recover valuable products concomitantly. Sulfate-rich wastewaters usually lack an electron donor; for this reason, implementing BES to treat the sulfate and the possibility of recovering the elemental sulfur (S 0 ) offers a solution to this kind of wastewater. This study proposes a novel BES configuration that combines bio-electrochemical sulfate reduction in a biocathode with a sulfide–air fuel cell (FC) to recover S 0 . The proposed system achieved high elemental sulfur production rates (up to 386 mg S 0 -S L ?1 d ?1 ) with 65% of the sulfate removed recovered as S 0 and a 12% lower energy consumption per kg of S 0 produced (16.50 ± 0.19 kWh kg ?1 S 0 -S) than a conventional electrochemical S 0 recovery system.

Keywords: bio-electrochemical systems (BES); fuel cells (FC); sulfate removal; resource recovery; oxygen-reducing cathode (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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