Augmentation of Microbial Fuel Cell A Tool for Sustainable Management of Wastewater

Abstract

It is difficult to survive without water and energy. Due to the climate change, rainfall pattern is changing creating trouble for insufficient rainfall in many countries. It is affecting India s economy a lot, as it is farmer s country. Water conservation is need of hour. The Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) are treating the waste water with energy consumption for operation of units. These treatment plant involves a huge initial investment. The waste water generated is required to be treated to recycle and reuse without any harmful effects. The waste water treatment plant needs the construction of preliminary, primary, secondary and tertiary units for the treatment of waste water. newlineEnergy has become one of the vital parameter now a day s. Energy consumption rate must balance the energy generation rate then only the use of energy is worth. It has now the most important building block in human development. The present global conditions suggest that it is difficult to reduce the consumption of energy. It is increasing day by day. The more reliable sources of energy are renewable and non-renewable sources of energy. Nonrenewable sources create pollution and solid waste disposal issues while generating the energy. There is need to develop new energy platform which work without creating pollution and satisfies the energy needs. newlineMicrobial Fuel Cell (MFC) is one of the promising technology for generation of electricity along with treatment of wastewater from biomass using bacteria. The aim of this research is to fabricate the MFC model and synthesis of clay membrane to check Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) removal efficiency, voltage and current generated for synthetic waste water. newlineThe energy generation from MFC depends upon many parameters such as MFC configuration, electrode material, type of waste water and Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM). The two main aspects of the research are energy generation and waste water treatment. An experimental study is undertaken on small scale dual chamber MFC model to harvest the energy and to