Self-powered wastewater treatment for the enhanced operation of a facultative lagoon

The goal of this study was to harness the redox gradients in facultative lagoons using a lagoon microbial fuel cell (LMFC) to enhance autonomously the delivery of oxygen to the lagoon through aeration and mixing by operating an air pump. To enhance the usability of the low power generated by the LMFC, a power management system (PMS) was used to harvest power continually while only operating the air pump intermittently. Here we demonstrate the LMFC as an alternative energy source for self-powered wastewater treatment systems by treating both artificial wastewater and dairy wastewater in large laboratory-scale simulated lagoons. For comparison, we also used a lagoon treatment system without self-aeration. We show that the integrated LMFC and PMS system was able to improve chemical oxygen demand (COD) removal time by 21% for artificial wastewater and by 54% for dairy wastewater. The LMFCPMS wastewater treatment system operated for over a year and proved to be robust and provide a measure of sustainability. The LMFC-PMS combination offers an innovative and low-tech approach to increasing the capacity of lagoons for rural communities. We believe that the technology developed in this research is the first step towards providing sustainable self-powered wastewater treatment systems.