Applied Energy 98 (2012) 230235

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

A microbial fuel cellmembrane bioreactor integrated system for cost-effective

wastewater treatment
Yong-Peng Wang a, Xian-Wei Liu a, Wen-Wei Li b,, Feng Li b, Yun-Kun Wang b, Guo-Ping Sheng b,
Raymond J. Zeng b, Han-Qing Yu b
a
b

School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China
Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 9 January 2012
Received in revised form 9 March 2012
Accepted 12 March 2012
Available online 28 April 2012
Keywords:
Microbial fuel cell (MFC)
Membrane bioreactor (MBR)
Wastewater treatment
Bio-cathode
Low-cost

a b s t r a c t
Microbial fuel cell (MFC) and membrane bioreactor (MBR) are both promising technologies for wastewater treatment, but both with limitations. In this study, a novel MFCMBR integrated system, which combines the advantages of the individual systems, was proposed for simultaneous wastewater treatment
and energy recovery. The system favored a better utilization of the oxygen in the aeration tank of MBR
by the MFC biocathode, and enabled a high efuent quality. Continuous and stable electricity generation,
with the average current of 1.9 0.4 mA, was achieved over a long period of about 40 days. The maximum
power density reached 6.0 W m 3. Moreover, low-cost materials were used for the reactor construction.
This integrated system shows great promise for practical wastewater treatment application.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are devices that use bacteria as catalysts to oxidize various substrates and recover electricity [1,2].
MFCs are promising for wastewater treatment processes, but to
achieve practical application there are still many technical and cost
obstacles to overcome [3]. One approach to reduce the barriers and
improve its applicability is to incorporate MFC into existing wastewater treatment processes [4,5]. In this respect, a continuous-ow
mode of operation is usually adopted, which is regarded as more
suitable for practical wastewater treatment and MFC application
[6]. An integration of MFC with conventional activated sludge process was rst reported by Cha et al. [7]. In this system, an aeration
tank was directly used as the cathode chamber, where the aerobic
biolm developed on the cathode serve as low-cost and self-sustainable catalyst. To support a continuous-ow operation, the aeration tank was followed by a clarier, and settled sludge was
continuously returned. However, this setup incurs additional cost
for the clarier construction and sludge pumping. Compared with
this design, a MFCmembrane bioreactor (MBR) integrated design
appeared to be more attractive in terms of costs and footprint [8].
MBRs present a high-efcient technology for wastewater treat-

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 551 3607592; fax: +86 551 3601592.
E-mail address: wwli@ustc.edu.cn (W.-W. Li).
0306-2619/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2012.03.029

ment, and recently the development of coarse lter MBRs have signicantly lowered the operating cost and promoted its widespread
application [914]. A novel bioelectrochemical membrane reactor,
which makes advantage of both a MBR and a MFC process, was recently reported to achieve a maximum power density of
4.35 W m 3 and good pollutant removal performance attributed
to the high biomass retention and solid rejection [8]. Nevertheless,
that system has a unique and complex reactor design. Specically,
a stainless steel mesh was used, which played a dual function of lter and MFC cathode. Thus, the application of other less-conductive
coarse materials would be limited in that system. In addition, there
might be difculties for the integrated system in keeping an appropriate and balanced biolm, which serve as both the biocatalyst of
MFC and the ltration/fouling layer of MBR. All these make it difcult to be directly incorporated into the existing MBR facilities
and its practical application might be limited.
Therefore, in this study we develop a more practical MFCMBR
integrated process, in which the aeration tank of a MBR was directly used as the cathode chamber. Carbon felt was used as the
cathode to favor biolm development. In order to further reduce
the investment and operating cost, low-cost nylon mesh were
adopted here as the lter material. The suitability of such materials
as MBR lter have been demonstrated in several previous studies
[8,14,15]. This work aims to investigate the feasibility of applying
a relatively simple MFCMBR integrated system for continuous
wastewater treatment and power generation.

Y.-P. Wang et al. / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 230235

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Integrated MFCMBR system
The diagram of the integrated MFCMBR system is shown in
Fig. 1. A non-woven fabric (density, 400 g m 2) was used as the
separator of the MFC part. Prior to use, the non-woven fabrics were
rst soaked in polytetrauoroethylene solution (15 wt.%) for
15 min, then dried at 105 C for 180 min to prevent water leakage.
The anodic chamber (80 mL, 4 cm  4 cm  5 cm) was lled with
self-fabricated activated carbon ber [16]. The aeration tank, with
a volume of 20 L, was used directly as the cathode chamber. A carbon felt (Sanye Carbon Co., China) with the thickness of 0.6 cm and
projected area of 90 cm2 was used as the cathode without any pretreatment and was wrapped on the non-woven cloth. The anode
and cathode were connected through a 50 X resistor and the voltages were recorded automatically every 10 min using a data acquisition system (USB2801, ATD Co., China).
For the MBR part, the nylon mesh with a pore size of 74 lm was
used as the lter material. The membrane module (14 cm  3 cm 
36 cm) with an effective ltration area of 1000 cm2 was submerged
into the aeration tank. Aeration units were placed at the bottom of
the module. The initial concentration of mixed liquor suspended
solids (MLSS) in the MBR was about 2.8 g L 1. The aeration ow
rate was 300 L h 1 and the inuent ow rate was 2.33 L h 1.
In order to suit the incorporation of MFC into MBR, the MBRs
inuent line was slightly altered. The MFC was inserted with two
silicone tubes on the top and bottom of anodic chamber. Synthetic
wastewater was continuously pumped into the MFC module
through the bottom silicone tube using a peristaltic pump (Lange
Co., China). The preliminarily treated wastewater in MFC module
then ew into the aeration tank of the MBR for further treatment.
2.2. Inoculation and operation of the system
A 50 mL mixture of anaerobic and activated sludge collected
from laboratory bioreactors was injected as inoculum into the anodic zone from the bottom tube of the MFC.
In order to enrich the electroactive bacteria for both anode and
cathode, the MFC module was initially submerged in an activated
sludge reactor and operated at a continuous-ow mode. The ow
rate (0.03 L h 1) was much lower than that selected for the coupled
system. The composition of wastewater was as described previously [17]. In the wastewater 50 mM phosphorus buffer was
added. The aeration was paused for 30 min every 3 days for maintenance. At the initial stage of the operation, a small amount of
inoculation sludge had been washed out. But with the accumula-

231

tion of anodic biomass, the microorganisms in efuent of MFC decreased signicantly. The enrichment process lasted for about
30 days.
After reaching a stable status for about 1 week, the MFC module
was transferred to the aeration tank of the MBR and the coupled
system began to work after small modication of MBRs inuent
pipe. The chemical oxygen demand (COD) concentration of the
synthetic wastewater was 400 mg L 1 which was close to the concentration of domestic wastewater. The COD concentrations of the
efuents from the MFC and the integrated system were measured
according to the Standard Method [18]. Prior to measurements, all
samples were ltered through a 0.45 lm membrane lter.
2.3. Morphological and electrochemical analysis
The biolm attached on the cathode was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) (Sirion200, FEI Ltd., UK), following
the procedure reported by Sun et al. [19].
To characterize the potential of catalyzing the oxygen reduction
by the cathodic biolm, cyclic voltammetry (CV) of the biolm (cut
from the cathode, about 0.4 cm2) was performed using an electrochemical workstation (CHI660C, Chenhua Instrument Co., China)
with a three-electrode system. The reactor inuent was used as
the electrolyte. To identify the position of oxygen reduction peak,
CV of the biolm was repeated in the original electrolyte bubbled
with nitrogen and air respectively. The CV of the fresh graphite felt
with the same area had also been tested as a control.
The polarization curves of MFC were obtained by varying the
circuit external resistance from 10 to 10,000 X when the cell voltage of the MFC was relatively stable. Coulombic efciency (CE) of
MFC was calculated as CE = Cp/Cth  100%, where Cp is the total
coulombs calculated by integrating the current over time, and Cth
is the theoretical amount of coulombs available based on the
COD removed in the MFC.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Electricity generation performance
After the MFC module was transferred into aeration tank of the
mesh bioreactor, the output current of MFC dropped a little from
about 1.1 mA to 0.76 mA. This decline of power generation was
mainly attributed to the lower conductivity of wastewater
compared to that of the phosphate buffered nutrient medium
for enrichment. In the following 2 days, the current gradually
increased to 2.6 mA (Fig. 2a), indicating that the biolm in the

Fig. 1. Schematic of the MFCMBR integrated system.

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Y.-P. Wang et al. / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 230235

Fig. 2. (a) Current generation of the system in over 40-day operation and (b)
polarization and power density curves for the MFC.

cathode of MFC were acclimated and began to catalyze the oxygen

reduction effectively. In the subsequent over 40 days, the MFC
exhibited a relatively good performance with current uctuating
at around 1.9 0.4 mA. This current uctuation was due to the
variety of temperature in the day time and at night.
Polarization curves were measured when the cell voltage
became relatively stable. The open circuit voltage of the MFC was
650 mV (Fig. 2b). The maximum power density was 6.0 W m 3
(normalized with the total MFC volume) or 0.053 W m 2 (normalized to the cathode area). The current and power outputs achieved
in this test were comparable with other membrane-less MFCs
[20,21] or MFCs integrated with activated sludge systems
[7,8,22]. From the slope of the polarization curve, the internal
resistance of the MFC was calculated as 365 28 X over a current
range of 0.062 mA, which was in the same range as other membrane-less MFCs [23,24].
The CE was calculated based on the data after the 14th day
when the system condition became stable. Generally, the total CE
of MFC was about 1.5%. This low CE was due to the diffusion of dissolved oxygen from the cathode to the anode, because the permeable non-woven fabrics were used as the separator [25,26].
In addition, previous studies have shown that during long-term
operation, a development of pH gradient tends to occur due to the
low diffusion rate of proton through the separator in MFCs [27].
This problem was effectively avoided here, as was demonstrated
by the low pH uctuations in the aeration tank. The continuous
ow from anode chamber to the aeration tank enabled a good
pH neutralization of the wastewater in this system, leading to a
high stability in electricity generation.
3.2. COD and SS removal efciencies
The efuent COD concentration maintained at around
41.5 14.8 mg L 1 (Fig. 3a). The average COD removal efciency
reached 89.6 3.7% (Fig. 3b). The poor COD removal on Days 6
and 7 was caused by the breakage of the MBR membrane. Because
of the good retention of particulate matters by the MBR, the efuent suspended solids (SS) concentration was nearly nil, and the

Fig. 3. (a) Efuent COD concentration; (b) COD removal efciency of the integrated
system; (c) MLSS concentration in the MBR.

efuent turbidity was about 0.8 NTU during the operation period.
The MLSS concentration of the reactor maintained at
2658 254 mg L 1 during the operation period (Fig. 3c).
As one signicant objective of this test was to investigate the
feasibility to provide an efcient and cost-effective bio-cathode
for MFCs by integrating MFCs with MBR, the volume of MFC anode
chamber was designed smaller than that of MBR, so that the substrate availability at the anode and oxygen transfer at the cathode
would be improved. Nevertheless, because of the great difference
between the net volume of the anode and cathode chamber, the
percentage of COD removed by the single MFC module was limited
due to a short hydraulic retention time in the MFC. For practical
application, more MFC could be submerged to the MBR system to
increase the COD conversion to electricity.
3.3. Morphological and electrochemical properties of cathode
The aeration tank of MBR provided a favorable environment for
the biocathode development. The formation of biolm on the cathode was clearly shown in Fig. 4ac. CV of the biolm was performed to characterize its potential of catalyzing the oxygen
reduction. As shown in Fig. 4d, a reduction peak at the potential
of 0.13 V vs. Ag/AgCl occurred. This reduction potential value
was close to that obtained from other biocatalysts for oxygen
reduction [28], even more positive than from some chemical catalysts [29,30]. In order to conrm whether the peak corresponded to
the oxygen reduction, CV of the biolm was repeated in fresh electrolyte bubbled with nitrogen and air respectively. The peak current decreased initially after nitrogen bubbling but rebounded
after about 10 min, demonstrating that oxygen reduction indeed

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Y.-P. Wang et al. / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 230235

Fig. 4. Microstructure and electrochemical properties of the bio-cathode. (a) SEM images of graphite felt; (b and c): SEM images of biolm on graphite felt; (d): Cyclic
voltammogram of the microorganisms on the cathode in r substrate at a COD of 400 mg L 1; s substrate then bubbled with nitrogen for 10 min; t substrate bubbled with
air for 10 min; and u cyclic voltammogram of fresh graphite felt in the substrate. The substrate had the same composition as the inuent of the integrated system.

occurred and microorganisms on the cathode could catalyze the

process efciently. CV of fresh graphite felt was also conducted
to exclude the possibility of oxygen reduction by graphite felt itself. Similar CV curves were obtained when bigger-size fresh
graphite felt (1 cm2) was used under the same condition.
3.4. Signicance of the integrated system of MFC and MBR
Here, we developed a low cost and efcient integrated process for
wastewater treatment, which combined the merits of both MFC and
MBR. The MBR favors good sludge retention and sufcient biolm
development on the MFC cathode, enables a high utilization of the
oxygen as electron acceptor at cathode, and ensures good efuent
quality. Meanwhile, the MFC has the promise to partially offset the
energy consumption in MBR process by generating electricity, and
thus enables a more sustainable wastewater treatment.
Low material cost and high operational sustainability are desirable for an efcient wastewater treatment system. The costs of the
main components of the present system were estimated and

compared with thoses in conventional MFC and MBR, as is shown

in Table 1. The cost of carbon felt, non-woven and nylon mesh here
added up to only 0.24 dollar and the overall cost for MFC and MBR
modules (plexiglass included, 3.3 dollar kg 1) did not exceed 5 dollars. The nylon mesh used in this test was so cheap that it could be
directly replaced after serious fouling. Other materials could work
well without maintenance for at least 1 year. The material costs for
wastewater treatment in 1 year with this system would be less
than 0.3 dollar m 3. Any expensive proton exchange membranes,
metal catalyst and microltration/ultraltration membranes
which were usually considered as the main costly components
for MFCs or MBRs were not adopted at all. These further add up
to the economical attractiveness of such a system and enable better sustainability of this system.
Several systems combining MFC and activated sludge processes
have been reported previously. A comprehensive comparison of
these systems and our reactor in terms of treatment performance,
power generation, economics and system characteristics is provided in Table 2. Due to the subsequent activated sludge system,

Table 1
Comparison of costs of main components in conventional MFC or MBR and in our system.
Components in MFC or MBR

Mostly used in conventional MFC or MBR

Used in our system

Anode
Cathode
Separator
Filtration material

Carbon cloth (E-Tek, 620 dollar m 2 [31])

Platinum-coated carbon cloth (E-Tek, 0.5 mg cm 2, 2000 dollar m
Naon membranes (2500 dollar m 2 [31])
Microltration or ultraltration membrane (66 dollar m 2 [32])

Self-fabricated carbon ber ()

Carbon felt (13 dollar m 2)
Non-woven (2 dollar m 2)
Nylon mesh (1 dollar m 2)

[31])

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Y.-P. Wang et al. / Applied Energy 98 (2012) 230235

Table 2
Performances and characteristics of systems combining MFC and activated sludge process.
Activated sludge system
applied

Normal activated sludge

system

SBR

MBR

MBR

Inuent/efuent
COD (mg L 1)
MPD (W m 3)
Anode
Cathode
PEM
System characteristics

234/

490/(<50)

(126439)/(2041)

400/(41.5 14.8)

16.7
Graphite felt or carbon cloth
Graphite felt or carbon cloth
Yes
Simple, but subsequent
module/operation is needed
to retain the biomass

2.3
Graphite granules
Carbon felt
No
Operated in batch mode;
large uctuation in substrate
supply

6.0
Activated carbon ber
Carbon felt
No
Simple, easy to maintain and
scale up; highly suitable for
continuous-ow operation

High investment, low

operating cost and moderate
maintenance cost
[7]

Low investment and

operating cost, low
maintenance cost
[22]

4.4
Graphite rod and granules
Stainless steel mesh
No
Complex design; high
conductivity is required for
ltering materials; difcult
biomass maintenance on the
cathode due to its dual functions
Moderate investment, low
operating cost and moderate
maintenance cost
[8]

Cost

Refs.

Low investment and operating

cost, low maintenance cost
This work

MPD: maximum power density.

all systems showed good performance in COD removal. However,

compared with SBR or other processes, MBR, attributed to the continuous-ow operating mode, is more suitable to couple with MFC.
In comparison with the MBR system reported by Wang et al. [8],
our system is simpler, easy to maintain, has no limitation in the
selection of ltering materials, and can be readily incorporated into
the existing wastewater treatment facilities. Furthermore, both the
investment and operating cost are very low compared to other systems. All these promise a great prospect of this integrated system
for practical wastewater treatment application.
4. Conclusions
In this study, an integrated MFCMBR system was demonstrated to favor low-cost and efcient wastewater treatment and
power generation. The MBR was used to guarantee the efuent
quality and to provide a low-cost and effective bio-cathode for
MFC, while the MFC promises an energy offset to the overall treatment process. An average current of 1.9 0.4 mA was generated
over a long period of about 40 days. The maximum power density
reached 6.0 W m 3. In addition, cost-effective materials were
adopted for the system construction, suggesting a high economical
attractiveness and practical applicability of this system. Nevertheless, further improvements in system design and operating conditions are still needed to enable a better wastewater treatment
performance and higher power generation.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the NSFC (51008290), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, the National
Water Pollution Control Project (2009ZX07210-003) and the
Outstanding Young Scientists Foundation of Anhui Province, China
(10040606Y27) for the partial support of this study.
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Glossary
Cyclic voltammetry (CV): a type of potentiodynamic electrochemical measurement.
During the measurement, the working electrode potential is ramped linearly over
time to a set potential, then the working electrodes potential ramp is inverted to
form a cycle. This technique is generally used to study the electrochemical properties of an analyte in solution. Cyclic voltammogram is the obtained proles from
cyclic voltammetry