Microbial Fuel Cell: An Approach for Utilization of Sugar Mill Waste Water for the Generation of Electricity

Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) is feasible to use as an alternative to conventional wastewater treatment techniques. This paper work successfully represents the MFC as a significant technology in the sugar manufacturing industry, uniting wastewater treatment and electricity production. The optimized design parameters are found out by evaluating the practicability of using different electrodes, varying detention time and increased electrode surface area. MFC in which stainless steel, Graphite is incorporated as electrode and Agar-NaCl salt bridge is used as proton exchange membrane is finally identified as the optimum design at 10 days detention time with an electrical energy generation of 319mV to 1067mV respectively. The percentage of removal efficiencies achieved in the optimized experimental setup for various parameters such as COD, BOD, and TDS correspondingly. Finally it has to be concluded that “Microbial Fuel Cell Technology� is efficient for sugar mill wastewater treatment and simultaneous energy recovery.