Electrical current generation from a continuous flow macrophyte biocathode sediment microbial fuel cell (mSMFC) during the degradation of pollutants in urban river sediment

Enhanced pollution control using sediment microbial fuel cells for ecological remediation

Sediment Microbial Fuel Cell (SMFC) technology is an innovative approach to facilitate the degradation of sedimentary organic matter by electroactive microorganisms, transforming chemical energy into electrical energy and modulating the redox potential at the sediment-water interface, consequently controlling the release of endogenous pollutants. The synergistic effects of various environmental factors and intrinsic conditions can significantly impact SMFC performance. This review provides a comprehensive overview of SMFC development in research and application for water environment treatment and ecological remediation, a perspective rarely explored in previous reviews. It discusses optimization strategies for SMFC implementation, emphasizing advancements in novel or cost-effective electrode materials, the dynamics of microbial communities, and the control of typical pollutants. The review suggests a virtuous cycle path for SMFC development, highlighting future research needs, including integrating cross-disciplinary approaches like artificial intelligence, genomics, and mathematical modeling, to enhance the deployment of SMFC in real-world environmental remediation.

Organic carbon compounds removal and phosphate immobilization for internal pollution control: Sediment microbial fuel cells, a prospect technology

As a current technology that can effectively remove organic carbon compounds and immobilize phosphorus in sediment, sediment microbial fuel cells (SMFCs) can combine sediment remediation with power generation. This review discusses the removal efficiency of SMFCs on organic carbon compounds, including sediment organic matter, antibiotics, oil-contaminated sediments, methane, persistent organic pollutants, and other organic pollutants in sediment, with more comprehensive and targeted summaries, and it also emphasizes the mitigation of phosphorus pollution in water from the perspective of controlling endogenous phosphorus. In this review, the microbial community is used as a starting point to explore more about its roles on phosphorus and organic carbon compounds under SMFCs. Electrode modification, addition of exogenous substances and combinations with other technologies to improve the performance of SMFCs are also reviewed. It is further demonstrated that SMFCs have the prospect of long-term sustainability, but more attention needs to be paid to the study of the mechanism of SMFCs and the continuous improvement of devices for further application in practice.

Improvement of zero waste sustainable recovery using microbial energy generation systems: A comprehensive review

Microbial energy generation systems, i.e., bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) are promising sustainable technologies that have been used in different fields of application such as biofuel production, biosensor, nutrient recovery, wastewater treatment, and heavy metals removal. However, BESs face great challenges such as large-scale application in real time, low power performance, and suitable materials for their configuration. This review paper aimed to discuss the use of BES systems such as conventional microbial fuel cells (MFCs), as well as plant microbial fuel cell (P-MFC), sediment microbial fuel cell (S-MFC), constructed wetland microbial fuel cell (CW-MFC), osmotic microbial fuel cell (OsMFC), photo-bioelectrochemical fuel cell (PBFC), and MFC-Fenton systems in the zero waste sustainable recovery process. Firstly, the configuration and electrode materials used in BESs as the main sources to improve the performance of these technologies are discussed. Additionally, zero waste recovery process from solid and wastewater feedstock, i.e., energy recovery: electricity generation (from 12 to 26,680 mW m^-2) and fuel generation, i.e., H₂ (170 ± 2.7 L^-1 L^-1 d^-1) and CH₄ (107.6 ± 3.2 mL^-1 g^-1), nutrient recovery of 100% (PO₄³-P), and 13-99% (NH₄⁺-N), heavy metal removal/recovery: water recovery, nitrate (100%), sulfate (53-99%), and sulfide recovery/removal (99%), antibiotic, dye removal, and other product recovery are critically analyzed in this review paper. Finally, the perspective and challenges, and future outlook are highlighted. There is no doubt that BES technologies are an economical option for the simultaneous zero waste elimination and energy recovery. However, more research is required to carry out the large-scale application of BES, as well as their commercialization.

Advances and prospects on the aquatic plant coupled with sediment microbial fuel cell system

Energy resource scarcity and sediment pollution perniciousness have become enormous challenges, to which research has been focused on energy recovery and recycle technologies to solve both above problems. The organic matter stored in anoxic sediments of freshwater ecosystem represents a tremendous potential energy source. The system of aquatic plant coupled with sediment microbial fuel cell (AP-SMFC) has attracted much attention as a more feasible, economical and eco-friendly way to remediate sediment and surface water and generate electricity. However, the research on AP-SMFC has only been carried out in the last decade, and relevant studies have not been well summarized. In this review, the advances and prospects on AP-SMFC were systematically introduced. Firstly, the annual publication counts and keywords co-occurrence cluster of AP-SMFC were identified and visualized by resorting to the CiteSpace software, and the result showed that the research on AP-SMFC increased significantly in the last decade on the whole and will continue to increase. The bibliometric results provided valuable references and information on potential research directions for future studies. And then, the research progress and reaction mechanism of AP-SMFC were systematically described. Thirdly, the performance of AP-SMFC, including nutrients removal, organic contaminants removal, and electricity generation, was systematically summarized. AP-SMFC can enhance the removal of pollutants and electricity generation compared with SMFC without AP, and is considered to be an ideal technology for pollutants removal and resource recovery. Finally, the current challenges and future perspectives were summarized and prospected. Therefore, the review could serve as a guide for the new entrants to the field and further development of AP-SMFC application.