Treatment of Textile Dye Wastewater with Simultaneous Bio-electricity Generation in Microbial Fuel Cell: A Review

Worldwide wastewater treatment is failing particularly in developing economies. As a result, the majority of industrial, pharmaceutical wastewater, and fecal sludge’s are discharged into the environment without any substantial form of treatment leading to diseases in humans and damage to the ecosystems. A huge problem arises from industries mainly involved in dyeing and textile processes which concentrate and discharge their wastewater with no or little treatment in open or river systems. The uncontrolled discharge of such dye wastewater considerably damages the environment and human health. The effective dye wastewater management approach requires a shift from viewing wastewater as a problem, towards emphasizing this wastewater as a resource. The Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) technology holds tremendous potential for decolorizing and degrading textile azo dye wastewater with the simultaneous generation of bio-electricity. This chapter provides a review of textile dye wastewater degradation with simultaneous bio-electricity production using MFC technology, its limitations, improvement, and commercialization. In this review, the current status of operational parameters of MFC for dye wastewater treatment and key limitations have been identified and comprehensively discussed for improving the MFC output. This chapter provides valuable inputs for optimizing dye wastewater management towards higher energy efficiency and safe water reuse. Further, the scaling up and effectiveness of MFC technology in dye wastewater treatment could be possibly achieved by synergy or integration with other existing treatment processes that have also been discussed.