TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding the sustainability niche of continuous flow tubular microbial fuel cells on beef packing wastewater treatment
AU - Li, Jian
AU - Ziara, Rami M.M.
AU - Li, Shaobin
AU - Subbiah, Jeyamkondan
AU - Dvorak, Bruce I.
N1 - Funding Information:
This project was financially supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Grant No. 2012-68003-30155 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Prevention, Detection and Control of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli (STEC) from Pre-Harvest through Consumption of Beef Products Program-A4101.
Funding Information:
This project was financially supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Grant No. 2012-68003-30155 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Prevention, Detection and Control of Shiga Toxin-Producing Escherichia coli (STEC) from Pre-Harvest through Consumption of Beef Products Program- A4101 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2020/6/1
Y1 - 2020/6/1
N2 - Beef packing industry consumes a large amount of water and energy to support its production. To transform this industry to be more sustainable, the produced wastewater from a Midwestern beef packing plant was treated by a bench-scale tubular microbial fuel cell (MFC) in continuous fed mode in present study. When the MFC was fed with 1 g L−1 beef extract solution, a maximum current density of 8.8 ± 0.2 A m−3 and organics removal of 28.2 ± 5.9% were observed. Switching feeding solution to real beef packing wastewater did not change system performance considerably. The current density achieved was 8.4 ± 0.2 A m−3 and the organics removal was 35.9 ± 9.7%. Life cycle assessment (LCA) results on operational phase showed that the environmental impact of produced electricity from MFC is minimal compared to the overall electricity consumption. Comparing to the existing on-site treatment infrastructures, adding MFC could reduce global warming by 36%. Also, integrating MFC into the existing on-site wastewater treatment will be less beneficial for fossil fuel depletion due to the less biogas produced, leading to higher requirement of natural gas utilization for heating purpose. The attractiveness of adding alternative energy producing treatment systems to food processors may be based on biogas production and use patterns.
AB - Beef packing industry consumes a large amount of water and energy to support its production. To transform this industry to be more sustainable, the produced wastewater from a Midwestern beef packing plant was treated by a bench-scale tubular microbial fuel cell (MFC) in continuous fed mode in present study. When the MFC was fed with 1 g L−1 beef extract solution, a maximum current density of 8.8 ± 0.2 A m−3 and organics removal of 28.2 ± 5.9% were observed. Switching feeding solution to real beef packing wastewater did not change system performance considerably. The current density achieved was 8.4 ± 0.2 A m−3 and the organics removal was 35.9 ± 9.7%. Life cycle assessment (LCA) results on operational phase showed that the environmental impact of produced electricity from MFC is minimal compared to the overall electricity consumption. Comparing to the existing on-site treatment infrastructures, adding MFC could reduce global warming by 36%. Also, integrating MFC into the existing on-site wastewater treatment will be less beneficial for fossil fuel depletion due to the less biogas produced, leading to higher requirement of natural gas utilization for heating purpose. The attractiveness of adding alternative energy producing treatment systems to food processors may be based on biogas production and use patterns.
KW - Anaerobic digestion
KW - Beef packing industry
KW - Life cycle assessment
KW - Microbial fuel cells
KW - Sustainability
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120555
DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120555
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85079347113
SN - 0959-6526
VL - 257
JO - Journal of Cleaner Production
JF - Journal of Cleaner Production
M1 - 120555
ER -