Non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory pharmaceutical wastewater treatment using a two‐chambered microbial fuel cell

Abstract

Abstract The two‐chambered microbial fuel cell (MFC) was designed and used for studying the efficiency of the real wastewater treatment from a non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory pharmaceutical plant as well as from synthetic wastewater containing diclofenac sodium (DS). The removal of the contaminants was expressed regarding chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal, as measured by spectrophotometry experiments. Moreover, the effect of two different types of the cathode on current characteristics and COD removal was investigated. This research showed that the Pt‐coated Ti cathode could lead to higher efficiency of both power density and COD removal. In this case, the results indicated that the maximum power density ( P max ) was 20.5 and 6.5 W/m 3 and the maximum COD removal was 93 and 78% for MFCs using real and synthetic wastewater, respectively.