Self-Driven Desalination and Advanced Treatment of Wastewater in a Modularized Filtration Air Cathode Microbial Desalination Cell.
Microbial desalination cells (MDCs) extract organic energy from wastewater for in situ desalination of saline water. However, to desalinate salt water, traditional MDCs often require an anolyte (wastewater) and a catholyte (other synthetic water) to produce electricity. Correspondingly, the traditional MDCs also produced anode effluent and cathode effluent, and may produce a concentrate solution, resulting in a low production of diluate. In this study, nitrogen-doped carbon nanotube membranes and Pt carbon cloths were utilized as filtration material and cathode to fabricate a modularized filtration air cathode MDC (F-MDC). With real wastewater flowing from anode to cathode, and finally to the middle membrane stack, the diluate volume production reached 82.4%, with the removal efficiency of salinity and chemical oxygen demand (COD) reached 93.6% and 97.3% respectively. The final diluate conductivity was 68 ± 12 μS/cm, and the turbidity was 0.41 NTU, which were sufficient for boiler supplementary or industrial cooling. The concentrate production was only 17.6%, and almost all the phosphorus and salt, and most of the nitrogen were recovered, potentially allowing the recovery of nutrients and other chemicals. These results show the potential utility of the modularized F-MDC in the application of municipal wastewater advanced treatment and self-driven desalination.
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, P.R. China.
Kuichang
K
Zuo
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, P.R. China.|School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China.
Zhen
Z
Wang
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, P.R. China.
Xi
X
Chen
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, P.R. China.
Xiaoyuan
X
Zhang
School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology , Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China.
Jiaolan
J
Zuo
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, P.R. China.
Peng
P
Liang
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, P.R. China.
Xia
X
Huang
D001674:Bioelectric Energy Sources; D004560:Electricity; D004566:Electrodes; D054712:Salinity; D062065:Wastewater; D018508:Water Purification
D062065:Wastewater