Comparative Study of the Effect of Clay-Based Proton Exchange Membrane and Agar-Agar in a Microbial Fuel Cell

Abstract

In this study effort was made to develop, operate and compare the performance of a clay-based proton exchange membrane microbial fuel cell (CB-MFC) with that of agar-agar (Agar-MFC) in achieving power generation and reduction in various pollution parameters that characterize wastewater from sanitary system. The maximum power density generation and chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal efficiencies observed in the cells CB-MFC and Agar-MFC, after a 20 day study period were (80.86mW/m2 and 64.2% ) and (20.93mW/m2 and 59.53%) respectively, with polarization effect from t10 to t20. The results showed a remarkable reduction in physicochemical data: conductivity (μs/cm), pH, Turbidity (mg/l), TSS (mg/l), TDS (mg/l) and salinity (%) with the use of Clay over the use of agar with higher voltage output in clay-based MFC. The result of optimizing the response variables (i.e power density and (COD) removal efficiency) simultaneously using response surface methodology (RSM) approach at regression coefficient, R2 value of 0.9714 for power density and 0.9843, showed cell optimum performance at clay PPT (3650C), pH (8.17) and Concentration (65.21v/v), and optimum performance values of 43.59mW/m2 and 68.02% (power density and COD) respectively. This advantage was considered to be a result of higher cell performance due to improved proton conductivity in CB-MFC which resulted in higher reduction rate in wastewater indices during cell operation.