Improved Wastewater Treatment by Using Integrated Microbial Fuel Cell-Membrane Bioreactor System Along with Ruthenium/activated Carbon Cathode Catalyst to Enhance Bio-energy Recovery

A two-stage integrated microbial fuel cell (MFC)-aerobic membrane bioreactor (MBR) based wastewater treatment technology with ruthenium/activated carbon (Ru/AC) as cathode catalyst in MFC was investigated. The results showcased the maximum volumetric power density and coulombic efficiency were nearly 1.4 and 1.5 times higher in case of MFC-MBR system with Ru/AC as cathode catalyst (2.7 W.m−3 and 12.8 ± 1.2%) than the control MFC-MBR system without Ru/AC (2.0 W.m−3 and 8.2 ± 0.6%), respectively. Moreover, these integrated MFC-MBR systems offered chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiency of more than 96% from the synthetic wastewater having initial COD of around 1 g.L−1. This integrated MFC-MBR technology offers an immense potential to be developed as full-scale application to offer reliable wastewater treatment along with bio-energy recovery.