Application of Microbial Fuel Cell in Wastewater Treatment and Simultaneous Bioelectricity Generation

Abstract

The overpopulation in the future will result in burning issues of our environment and the negative effects of global warming, environmental pollution, and habitat loss in the worldwide human community. Moreover, the nonrenewable natural resources such as fossil fuels and clear water are consumed at the speed faster than their rate of regeneration. Worldwide demand has increased year by year, which is required to exceed production from known and anticipated resources. Last but not least, the demands of water used in agriculture, industries, and supporting population growth have increased and become of the most challenges in later centuries. Under those circumstances, there are prerequisites for finding alternative renewable energy resources and cost-effective wastewater treatment technologies with less energy expenditure. Among various technologies that have been well investigated, microbial fuel cell might be the potential candidate to administer with the recent situation of wastewater–energy nexus. In general, the microbial fuel cell is a cross-disciplinary technology so that survey area has extended to energy, material sciences, biology, and environment. In this chapter, we aim to present the possibility of generating electricity in MFC from a wide range of organic waste and hazardous wastes. In addition, the integrations between microbial fuel cells and other technologies are also introduced which have supposedly made great opportunities to concurrently reach sustainable energy production, efficient wastewater treatment, and reuse.