Performance of Synthetic Urine-Fed Microbial Fuel Cell at Various Substrate Concentrations and Flow Rates

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Published: Apr 28, 2023
Keywords:
Synthetic urine microbial fuel cell Soil nutrient Chemical oxygen demand Removal rate Power density

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Warista Chumroen
Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Circular Resources and Environmental Protection Technology Research Unit (CREPT), Faculty of engineering, Mahasarakham University
Petch Pengchai
Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Circular Resources and Environmental Protection Technology Research Unit (CREPT), Faculty of engineering, Mahasarakham University

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of microbial fuel cells (MFCs) fed with urine at various substrate concentrations and flow rates. In this work, 3 MFCs were used to process synthetic human urine (SU-D0) and diluted synthetic human urine (SU-D1) at flow rates of 20 L/d (MFC1, HRT=6h), 30 L/d (MFC2, HRT=4h), and 40 L/d (MFC3, HRT=3h). The results showed that MFC2 was the best energy producer (1.221±1.579 mW/m2 for SU-D0, 0.153 ±0.133 mW/m2 for SU-D1) and the best nutrient remover due to its maximum removal efficiencies in both SU–D0 (45.6±2.8% for NO3-, 41.2±20.0% for NO2-, 40.6±12.8% for TN, 36.1±27.7% for PO43-) and SU-D1 (39.0±32.4% for NO3-, 31.4±10.3% for PO43-) conditions. The modified Lineweaver-Burk plot with the determination coefficient (R2) of 0.922-0.975 revealed that the increased substrate loading rate contributed to the higher nutrient removal rate. Furthermore, this study found that the power densities and the removal efficiencies of NO3-, NO2-, and PO43- were positively correlated.

Article Details

Issue
Vol. 37 No. 1 (2023): January-April
Section
Research Articles
Author Biography

Warista Chumroen, Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Circular Resources and Environmental Protection Technology Research Unit (CREPT), Faculty of engineering, Mahasarakham University

Environmental Engineering Laboratory, Circular Resources and Environmental Protection Technology Research Unit (CREPT), Faculty of engineering, Mahasarakham University, Mahasarakham 44150, Thailand

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