Performance and response of coupled microbial fuel cells for enhanced anaerobic treatment of azo dye wastewater with simultaneous recovery of electrical energy

The anaerobic baffled reactor (ABR) is an anaerobic bioreactor that uses baffles to separate the working area into multiple reaction zones. The ABR-microbial fuel cell (MFC) reactor was constructed by embedding MFC in each reaction zone of the ABR. Its degradation of azo dye type (acid mordant red) wastewater and microbial power generation performance were investigated. For different electrode area ratios, the best enhanced treatment and electrical energy output of the coupled system was achieved with an anode/cathode area ratio of 1:1. Compared with the electrode area ratio of 2:1 and 1:2, the power density increased by 82.5% and 80.6%, and the Coulomb efficiency increased by 133.3% and 64.7%. In addition, the best enhanced treatment of printing and dyeing wastewater was achieved by ABR-MFC at 1:1. At a dye concentration of 200 mg/L and a sucrose concentration of 1000 mg/L, the coupled system obtained a COD removal of 92.85% and a chromaticity removal of 96.2%, which achieved a relative COD and chromaticity removal improvement of 1.82% and 2.64%, respectively, relative to the ABR. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observation of the electrodes at 1:1 revealed that more microorganisms were attached to the anode surface of the coupled system, the particle size of the granular sludge within the system was larger, and the UV scanning pattern showed lower dye concentration in the water. In conclusion, the microbial fuel cell enhanced anaerobic treatment of dyeing wastewater was the most effective when the electrode area ratio was 1:1, and the best electrical energy output was obtained at the same time. ABR-MFC provides a new idea for the enhanced treatment of dyeing wastewater and electrical energy production.