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Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering >> 2016, Volume 10, Issue 1 doi: 10.1007/s11783-014-0730-5

Nitrogen recovery from wastewater using microbial fuel cells

1. Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China.2. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China

Accepted: 2014-06-11 Available online: 2015-12-03

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Abstract

Nitrogen is one of major contaminants in wastewater; however, nitrogen, as bio-elements for crop growth, is the indispensable fertilizer in agriculture. In this study, two-chamber microbial fuel cells (MFCs) were first operated with microorganisms in anode chamber and potassium ferricyanide as catholyte. After being successfully startup, the two-chamber MFCs were re-constructed to three-chamber MFCs which were used to recover the and of synthetic wastewater into value-added nitrogenous fertilizer from cathode chamber and anode chamber, respectively. Ferric nitrate was used as the sole electron acceptor in cathode, which also was used to evaluate the recover efficiency in the case major anion of in cathode. The output voltage of these MFCs was about 600–700 mV at an external load of 500 Ω. About 47% in anode chamber and 83% in cathode chamber could be recovered. Higher current density can selectively improve the recovery efficiency of both and . The study demonstrated a nitrogen recovery process from synthetic wastewater using three-chamber MFCs.

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