Kinetics Of PCP Co-metabolic Degradation In A Microbial Fuel Cell

Pentachlorophenol (PCP) is one of the typically recalcitrant organics and exhibits carcinogenesis, teratogenesis and mutagenesis in industrial and agricultural processes. Common PCP treatments involve physical, chemical and biological methods. Biological treatment exhibits multiple advantages over chemical and physical process in terms of sustainability and operation cost. Co-metabolism is one of the pathways of PCP biodegradation. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) is one novel technology which directly converts chemical energy to electricity using biocatalysts and shows cleannss, high efficiency and low sludge over conventional anaerobic process. MFC was firstly used for PCP co-metabolic degradation in this study, and kinetic parameters like concentrations of PCP and co-metabolic substrate, pH and temperature were accessed for efficient PCP removal and power generation.The optimal co-metabolic substrate of acetate and glucose was 1.5 g/L at the presence of 5 mg/L PCP. At the presence of 10 mg/L PCP, relationship between power production positively correlated with PCP degradation rate for both acetate and glucose fed MFCs. The correlation equations were y=0.0203x-0.0645 (R2=0.9919) for acetate fed MFCs and y= 0.017x-0.0452 (R2=0.9989) for glucose fed MFCs, respectively. In terms of power production, the optimal pHs of 9.0 for acetate fed MFCs whereas glucose fed MFCs exhibited the highest at pH 8.0. An acidic pH 5.0 was beneficial for PCP degradation rate, reaching 0.21 mg/L-h for acetate and 0.17 mg/L-h for glucose fed MFCs. In the case of temperature and using acetate as co-substrate,35℃was the optimal for both power generation and PCP degradation, achieving 17.5 W/m3 and 0.21 mg/L-h, respectively.