Microbial desalination cell technology: Concepts and influencing factors on performance

The rapid growth of worldwide population has increased demand for energy, food, and water resources; addressing these needs by traditional technologies has left significant environmental pollutions resulting in climate change. Electrical providing as well as greenhouse gases reduction has led modern societies to utilize renewable energy sources. Also, various technologies have been developed for wastewater treatment as long as saltwater desalination, such as electrodialysis (ED) and reverse osmosis (RO). Biofuel cell (BFC) technology is one of the trending renewable energy sources in the last year, which directly converts chemical energy of organic matter to electrical curren. Microbial fuel cell (MFC) is the most important branch of BFC technologies that can use wastewaters as fuel results in wastewater treatment and electricity generation. Combining MFC and ED technologies, microbial desalination cell (MDC) has been developed, which provides electricity generation, desalination of saltwater and wastewater treatment simultaneously. MDC efficiency relies on various influencing factors and we will review these factors on basic ۳-chambered MDC.

کلیدواژه ها:

wastewater treatment ، electricity generation ، saltwater desalination ، microbial fuel cell