Sustainable Approach for Tannery Wastewater Treatment: Bioelectricity Generation in Bioelectrochemical Systems

Alae Elabed (1) , Soumya El Abed (2) , Saad Ibnsouda (2) , Benjamin Erable (1)

1 LGC - Laboratoire de Génie Chimique
2 USMBA - Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah

Treating tannery wastewater in bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) is considered as an achievable, economical and sustainable process compared to conventional methods. Two experiments with raw and pretreated tannery wastewater were operated separately to elucidate the divergence to form an efficient microbial anode under similar operating conditions [temperature (30 ± 0.1 °C); acidophilic microenvironment (pH 4.5), constant potential − 0.2 V/ECS]. In the reactor operated with raw tanneries, no microbial activity was detected due to the toxicity of the tannery effluent. While, the reactor fed by tannery wastewater that sustained electrochemical pretreatment demonstrated the ability of in situ bioelectricity generation along with wastewater treatment. Maximum current density of 11.2 A/m2 was obtained accompanied with removal of 90%, 84% and 96%, respectively, of chemical oxygen demand, biological oxygen demand (BOD5) and sulfate in addition of total removal of chromium. This study shows the potential approach of electrochemical pretreatment for the efficient tannery wastewater treatment using BESs accompanied with high current recovery.

Mots clés: Microbial fuel cell; Tannery wastewater treatment; Electrochemical pretreatment; Microbial anode

Domaines: Génie chimique; Génie des procédés

Alae Elabed, Soumya El Abed, Saad Ibnsouda, Benjamin Erable. Sustainable Approach for Tannery Wastewater Treatment: Bioelectricity Generation in Bioelectrochemical Systems. Arabian Journal For Science and Engineering, 2019, pp.1-10. ⟨10.1007/s13369-019-04050-y⟩. ⟨hal-02284196⟩