Recourse recovery of bioenergy from cellulosic material in a microbial fuel cell fed with giant reed-loaded wastewater

ABSTRACT

The ability of electrochemically active bacteria to degrade natural cellulosic bio-materials suggests a promising technology for converting biodegradable cellulosic wastes into electricity in specific applications. Giant reed (GR), a wild crop abundantly available everywhere, is a potential source for cellulose. In this study, a lab-scale dual-chamber microbial fuel cell (MFC) was fueled with actual domestic wastewater loaded with different concentrations of powdered giant reed (PGR) as a new source for carbon and energy. The results revealed that in the continuous-feed tests, the maximum chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiencies of 67, 79, 82, and 85% associated with maximum power generation of 162, 195, 233, 392 mW/m² were observed in MFC fueled with PGR-loaded wastewater at initial concentrations of 0, 50, 75, and 100 g PGR/L wastewater, respectively. A three-layer artificial neural network (ANN) model was used in this study to predict the efficiency of the MFC in regard to power generation. The predicted results indicated a good fit between measured and predicted data, with a high determination coefficient (R²) of 0.9993 and negligible mean square error (MSE). The fact that mixed cultures can utilize cellulose for electricity generation provides a new approach for future studies on electricity production from natural cellulose sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Giant reed
• wastewater
• microbial fuel cell
• bioelectricity, artificial neural network

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Wasit University for providing some technical facilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.