Sustainable approach for wastewater treatment through microbial fuel cell (MFC): Using wood glue instead of expensive polymeric binders

Wastewater treatment (WWT) through microbial fuel cell (MFC) has received greatattention due to its simplicity and high efficiency. However, the relatively highoperation cost of this approach limits its application for large scale. In this research, anovel technique of using cheap wood glue instead of expensive polymeric binders foranode fabrication was presented to make the application of MFC feasible for WWT.The reduction of chemical oxygen demand (COD) was monitored to evaluate theperformance of the new designed MFC with wood glue (MFC-WG) in comparison withconventional anode martials for MFCs (such as carbon felt: MFC-CF and carbon cloth:MFC-CC). A brief economic analysis was conducted to study the feasibility of the newapproach. According to the results, a COD removal of ۶۶.۷% was achieved in the caseof MFC-WG which was less than MFC-CF (۷۰.۴%), but more than MFC-CC (۶۳.۲%).However, the economic analysis results revealed that using MFC-WG couldsignificantly reduce the overall cost MFC operation: XX% and XX% less than MFCCFand MFC-CC, respectively. As a result, the findings of this research suggest MFCsas promising alternative for WWT conventional methods at large scale.

Keywords:

Waste water treatment , Microbial fuel cell , COD reduction , Wood Glue