Phthalic Acid Esters Degradation And Electricity Generation Using Microbial Fuel Cell

Energy is the material basis for the survival and development of human society, but also support the development of industrial and economic stability necessary elements. Facing the serious situation of the shortage of energy supply and growing environmental crisis, it is important to develop new renewable alternative energy today. As a kind of emerging clean energy technology in recent years, microbial fuel cell is the production of microbiology technology and battery technology. It is the device which uses microorganism as catalyzer to catalyse fuel into electricity energy. Microbial fuel cells realize the efficient degradation of organic matter and output steady electricity. This article try to use sodium acetate as co-substrate for studying the degradation of phthalic acid esters and simultaneous electricity production. It provides a new research direction for the development of new technology for wastewater treatment and the new development and utilization of renewable energy.Proton exchange membrane, as the most important part of a PEMFC, plays a key role of proton conduction. Its performance will affect the overrall property of PEMFC direcly. Nafion membrane is a perfluorosulphonic acid membrane, with its high proton conductivity and stability, shares a great part of membrane market presently, but the complex preparation technology and low methanol permeability inhibit its development. This article try to take PVDF as a basic body, graft sulfonic acid groups on it for PVDFg-SSS proton exchange membrane. And using the PVDF-g-SSS proton exchange membrane into the two chambered microbial fuel cell to test its capability of electricity production and simultaneous biodegradation of phthalate in order to prove the PVDF-gSSS grafted membrane as a substitute for Nafion membrane feasibly.The experiments were conducted to test the potential for biodegradation of organic matters and electricity generation using sodium acetate or sodium acetate + phthalate, respectively as the fuel, and to compare the differences between MFC technique and conventional anaerobic treatment method in the biological degradation of toxic and recalcitrant contaminants. When using sodium acetate and sodium acetate + phthalate, respectively as the fuel, the maximum voltage of 353 mV(2 g/L NaAc), 226 mV(2 g/L NaAc + 10 mg/L PAEs), 278 mV(2 g/L NaAc + 30 mg/L PAEs), 360 mV(2 g/L NaAc + 50 mg/L PAEs) based on an external resistance of 1000 ?, and the corresponding maximum power densities of 25.47 mW/m2, 58.78 mW/m2, 49.39 mW/m2, 40.82 mW/m2 were obtained respectively. The power output curves displayed a regular three periods: rising stage, stabilization stage, falling stage. However, electricity generation is different in the tested substrate and power densities of sodium acetate + phthalate is higher than that of sodium acetate, which suggested that electricity-generating microbes existing in the anode had selectivity to the substrates. Meanwhile, the maximum degradation efficiency of these substrates and COD(chemical oxygen demand) removal were up to 70% and 89%, respectively. The MFC with closed circuit control enhanced phthalic acid esters biodegradation by about 10% compared to open circuit control, which indicated MFC could enhance utilization and biodegradation of the substrates, or existed new metabolic pathway of substrate degradation.It is workable to use the PVDF-g-SSS ion exchange membrane into the two chambered microbial fuel cell which proved the PVDF-g-SSS grafted membrane as a substitute for Nafion membrane feasibly. The maximum voltage of 246 mV(2 g/L NaAc + 10 mg/L PAEs), 259 mV(2 g/L NaAc + 30 mg/L PAEs), 333 mV(2 g/L NaAc + 50 mg/L PAEs) based on an external resistance of 1000 ?, and the corresponding maximum power densities of 23.28 mW/m2, 26.67 mW/m2, 33.80 mW/m2 were obtained respectively. And the removal efficiency of MFC was on the same level as the Nafion membrane.The results clearly demonstrated the feasibility of using the MFC to generate electricity using phthalic acid esters as fuel and simultaneously degrading the substrates. These results indicated MFC offer a new method of enhancing biodegradation of recalcitrant contaminants in practical applications. It is significant for promoting the MFC project applications when PVDF-g-SSS grafted membrane applied successfully.