Performance of sewage sludge treatment and electricity generation by different configuration microbial fuel cells

This paper compared the degradation efficiency of sludge organic matters and electric-production by two typical microbial fuel cells-dual-chamber microbial fuel cell (DMFC) and single chamber air cathode microbial fuel cell (SAMFC), and the variations of sludge protein, polysaccharide and ammonia nitrogen within the systems were also investigated. The results showed that the concentration of sludge soluble chemical oxygen demand, protein and carbohydrate of DMFC are higher than these of SAMFC during the systems operation, while DMFC can achieve a better ammonia nitrogen removal than SAMFC. Under the same operation condition, the stable voltage output of DMFC and SAMFC is 0.61 V and 0.37 V; the maximum power density of DMFC and SAMFC is 2.79 W/m³ and 1.25 W/m³; TCOD removal efficiency of DMFC and SAMFC is 34.14% and 28.63% for 12 d, respectively. Meanwhile, DMFC has a higher coulomb efficiency than SAMFC, but both are less than 5%. The results showed that DMFC present a better performance on sludge degradation and electric-production.