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Anodic metabolic activity regulates the desalination efficiency in microbial catalysed electrochemical system
T K Vanitha1, Manupati Hemalatha2, S Venkata Mohan2
1Bioengineering and Environmental Sciences Lab, Department of Energy and Environmental Engineering, CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT), Hyderabad 500007, India.
Abstract:
Anodic metabolic rate showed regulatory influence on the desalination performance of microbial desalination cell (MDC) under open (OC) and closed circuit (CC) operations. In this study, three MDCs were tested for desalination with three different organic substrate loads 1500 ± 55 mg/L in MDC-A; 3500 ± 10 g/L in MDC-B; 4500 ± 12 g/L in MDC-C. Higher desalination and substrate removal rates were observed in CC than OC. Average desalination was MDC-C (51.4%-CC) > MDC-B (47.3%-CC) > MDC-A (45.3%-CC) and COD removal efficiencies were MDC-C (68.4%-CC) > MDC-B (64.4%-CC) > MDC-A (51.9%-CC). Increase in organic load resulted in higher desalination efficiency which was due to higher electrochemical and ionic gradient apart from anodic metabolic activity. The voltage and current density were observed to be maximum in MDC-C (685 mV; 2.16 mA/m2) followed by MDC-B (598 mV; 1.98 mA/m2) and MDC-A (501 mV; 1.76 mA/m2). This study demonstrated that the MDCs performance can be regulated by varying organic load and circuitry modes.
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