Selective recovery of Cu²⁺ and Ni²⁺ from wastewater using bioelectrochemical system

Abstract

As the bioelectrochemical system, the microbial fuel cell (MFC) and the microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) were developed to selectively recover Cu²⁺ and Ni²⁺ ions from wastewater. The wastewater was treated in the cathode chambers of the system, in which Cu²⁺ and Ni²⁺ ions were removed by using the MFC and the MEC, respectively. At an initial Cu²⁺ concentration of 500 mg·L^-1, removal efficiencies of Cu²⁺ increased from 97.0%±1.8% to 99.0%±0.3% with the initial Ni²⁺ concentrations from 250 to 1000 mg·L^-1, and maximum power densities increased from 3.1±0.5 to 5.4±0.6 W·m^-3. The Ni²⁺ removal mass in the MEC increased from 6.8±0.2 to 20.5±1.5 mg with the increase of Ni²⁺ concentrations. At an initial Ni²⁺ concentration of 500 mg·L^-1, Cu²⁺ removal efficiencies decreased from 99.1%±0.3% to 74.2%±3.8% with the initial Cu²⁺ concentrations from 250 to 1000 mg·L^-1, and maximum power densities increased from 3.0±0.1 to 6.3±1.2 W·m^-3. Subsequently, the Ni²⁺ removal efficiencies decreased from 96.9%±3.1% to 73.3%±5.4%. The results clearly demonstrated the feasibility of selective recovery of Cu²⁺ and Ni²⁺ from the wastewater using the bioelectrochemical system.

Keywords

bioelectrochemical system / Cu²⁺ / Ni²⁺ / selective recovery

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Acknowledgements

This work was partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51039007, 51179212, and 51278500), the program of Guangzhou Science & Technology Department (No. 2012J4300115), and the research fund program of Guangdong provincial key laboratory of environmental pollution control and remediation technology (No. 2013K0002); the research fund program of key laboratory of water and air pollution control of Guangdong Province (No. GD2012A01).

Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11783-014-0633-5 and is accessible for authorized users.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg