UTILIZATION OF POLYETHERSULFONE (PES) HOLLOW FIBER AS THE MEMBRANE OF A MILLILITER-SCALE MICROBIAL FUEL CELL (MFC)

MFC devices have shown much promise recently because of simultaneous wastewater treatment and electricity generation and lower sludge production compared to the conventional treatment processes which reduced the treatment costs and sludge disposal problems (Rabaey and Verstraete (۲۰۰۵) , Logan and Regan (۲۰۰۶) , Hashemi and Samimi (۲۰۱۲) , Logan and Rabaey (۲۰۱۲) , He (۲۰۱۳) , Miroliaei et al. (۲۰۱۵) , Reza et al. (۲۰۱۵)). However, high capital cost (Li et al. (۲۰۱۴)) and relatively low-quality effluent of MFCs (Ren et al. (۲۰۱۴)) limited their practical application for wastewater treatment. in this respect, several attempts had been performed to replace the expensive materials of MFCs including high-cost electrodes (Wei et al. (۲۰۱۱) , Ben Liew et al. (۲۰۱۴)) and separators like famous Cation Exchange Membranes (CEMs) with other separators like microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) membranes, Nano porous filters, and different coarse pore fibers (Biffinger et al. (۲۰۰۷) , Kim et al. (۲۰۰۷) , Zhang et al. (۲۰۱۰) , Li et al. (۲۰۱۱) , Kondaveeti et al. (۲۰۱۴) , Yousefi et al. (۲۰۱۶) , Khalili et al. (۲۰۱۷) , Vajihe Yousefi et al. (۲۰۱۷) , Yousefi et al. (۲۰۱۷), (۲۰۱۸), (۲۰۱۹), (۲۰۲۰) , Cheraghipoor et al. (۲۰۲۱)). However, some researchers show that using coarse pore, UF and MF membranes as separator decreased the power density of MFC owing to high oxygen and substrate leakage between the electrodes (Li et al. (۲۰۱۱)). Nevertheless, Hou et al., (۲۰۱۱) compared the performance of MFCs with different UF membranes (with diverse cut off molecular weights), MF and Nafion membrane as a separator. They observed that diffusion rates of oxygen and substrate between the chambers were directly proportional tothe pore size of membranes. Finally, the UF membrane with a smaller pore size (۱KDa cut off molecular weight) shows higher coulombic efficiency and power density than Nafion membrane (Hou et al. (۲۰۱۱)). Kim et al., (۲۰۱۳) also reported that using UF membrane with appropriate pore size as a separator in MFCs not only provides efficient electricity generation but also it could improve the quality of effluent considerably (Kim et al. (۲۰۱۳)). Similarly, Ge et al., (۲۰۱۲) integrated the hollow fiber UF membranes into the tubular MFC to improve the effluent treatment quality (Zheng et al. (۲۰۱۳)).