Concurrent Energy Recovery and Wastewater Treatment in an Enhanced Microbial Fuel Cell Utilizing Negatively Functionalized KIT-6 Embedded into Sulfonated Poly Ether Sulfone as a Novel Proton Exchange Membrane
摘要
Mesoporous silica-based materials (SBA-15, TUD-1, HMM-33, KIT-6, FSM-16, etc.) with spongy-like structure are high-efficient candidates for the manufacture of ion exchange membranes (IEMs). According to the literatures, the more functionalized sites, the higher ions transfer can be achieved. In the present work, we chose KIT-6 functionalized with sulfonic groups to embed into the sulfonated poly ether sulfone (SPES) as the composite membrane and have evaluated its performance in a microbial fuel cell (MFC). Structural analysis of membranes demonstrated that S-KIT-6 with percentage of 1.5 could create a smooth surface with acceptable hydrophilicity which not only improved proton exchange ability, but also increase power production of the system. The characterization results were in agreement with experimental data. The MFC working with SPES/S-KIT-6-1.5% could achieve the highest power density with value of 0.824 ± 0.02