Abstract
Water pollution and energy production are major issues in the context of climate change, urbanization and industrialization. There is need for cost-effective and sustainable processes for wastewater treatment. Here we designed a novel system made of a stack of 12 vertically-arranged constructed wetlands coupled with microbial fuel cells. Performance was evaluated in terms of chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, NH4+–N, NO3−–N, and PO4−3 removal efficiency, and electricity generation. The results reveal that the efficiency of COD removal increased gradually with decreasing external resistance, reaching 98.5% at 0.08 kΩ. The maximum removal efficiency was 90.4% for NH4+–N at 15 kΩ and 86.9% for NO3–N at 0.08 kΩ. The maximum power density reached 30.85 mW/m3 at 15 kΩ.
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Acknowledgements
PT thankfully acknowledges the JRF fellowship from UGC, and AKY acknowledges the funding from NASF, New Delhi and CSIR Project MLP-37.
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Tamta, P., Rani, N. & Yadav, A.K. Enhanced wastewater treatment and electricity generation using stacked constructed wetland–microbial fuel cells. Environ Chem Lett 18, 871–879 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-020-00966-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-020-00966-2