Use of biowaste for electrical energy production through microbial fuel cells
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Date
2017-07
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
Waste is a common term for all kind of unwanted materials generated during the extraction and processing of raw materials to get intermediate and final products. There are different sources of biowaste generation, which includes agriculture, industrial, domestic waste, municipal solid waste, commercial and institutional etc. Municipal solid waste is mainly generated from domestic kitchen waste and commercial complexes. With the increase of urbanization and change in socio-economic system, lifestyle and food habits, the amount of municipal solid waste has been increasing rapidly over years and its composition is getting changed. Poor collection and incomplete transportation are responsible for the accumulation of MSW at every nook and corner. In India, about 10% of the collected MSW is openly burnt and is caught in landfill fire. Such open burning of MSW and landfill fires together releases 22,000 tons of pollutants into the lower atmosphere. A major portion of the total solid waste in developing countries is an organic waste, and it is not properly treated for resource recovery. Organic waste treatment is also a top priority in the developing countries. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are an alternative energy technology that has the capacity to simultaneously treat organic waste and generate electricity. The aim of present study was to manage the solid waste and generation of electricity by using microbial fuel cell (MFC).MFCs is used to generate electricity while accomplishing the biodegradation of organic matters by microbes. The objective of present work was generation of electricity by mixture of different biowaste as a substrate in MFC. The experimental study was carried out by using biowaste (Kitchen waste, cow dung and poultry waste), zinc and copper plates of dimension length=15 cm and width 4.5 cm with potassium ferricyanide used as an oxidizing agents. In all the setup maximum electricity generation was measured between 321 to 736.66 mV by using mixture of kitchen waste with cow dung waste and poultry waste. In all setup maximum electricity generation of 736.66 mV was recorded by using only 100% poultry waste. Overall, this study has shown that the fabricated microbial fuel cell can be used for the generation of electricity from different kinds of biowaste at a larger scale in series with continuous feeding of biowaste and it can be considered as eco-friendly system for solid waste management.
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