Energy recovery from waste activated sludge (WAS) by microbial fuel cell (MFC) can simultaneously address energy issue and environmental concerns. Pretreatments are vital to enhancing energy recovery and sludge reduction with WAS as power source in MFC. The commonly applied two-stage process, which separates WAS pretreatment with electricity generation, decreases the cost-effectiveness of MFC with WAS as power source. It is of great practical importance to investigate the feasibility of one-stage process for simultaneous sludge pretreatment and electricity generation. Herein, a one-stage alkaline MFC (anode chamber controlled at pH 9.0) is constructed to recover energy from in-situ alkaline pretreated WAS. Results show that alkaline MFC achieves excellent performance of electricity generation with high voltage output (0.74 V) and high power density (0.65 W m⁻²). The total chemical oxygen demand removal of WAS is >40%. No greenhouse gas (CH₄ and CO₂) are released from the alkaline MFC with WAS as power source. The enhanced electricity generation performance in the alkaline MFC is investigated through three aspects, including internal resistance, degradation of soluble organics, and shift of microbial community. This work offers a promising alternative for energy recovery with WAS as renewable power source.

通过微生物燃料电池（MFC）从废活性污泥（WAS）中回收能量可以同时解决能源问题和环境问题。使用WAS作为MFC中的动力源，预处理对于增强能量回收和减少污泥至关重要。常用的两步工艺将WAS预处理与发电分开，降低了以WAS为动力源的MFC的成本效益。研究一阶段工艺同时进行污泥预处理和发电的可行性具有重要的实践意义。本文中，构造了一级碱性MFC（阳极室的pH值控制在9.0），以从原位碱性预处理的WAS中回收能量。结果表明，碱性MFC在高电压输出下具有出色的发电性能（0。^-2）。WAS的总化学需氧量去除率> 40％。以WAS为动力的碱性MFC不会释放任何温室气体（CH ₄和CO ₂）。通过三个方面来研究碱性MFC中增强的发电性能，包括内部电阻，可溶性有机物的降解以及微生物群落的迁移。这项工作为WAS作为可再生能源的能源回收提供了一种有希望的替代方法。