Computational Fluid Dynamic Analysis in Microbial Fuel Cells with Different Anode Configurations |
---|
학술지명 IWA ASPIRE
저자 유재철,김병군,김홍석,김지연
발표일 2013-09-11
|
Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) are a promising technology that can produce electricity from organic matter in wastewater. Previous studies have reported that many factors such as configuration, materials, operation conditions, and microorganisms affect MFC performance. Among them, MFC performance is significantly influenced by interaction between the electrode and the attached growth bacteria on the electrode because MFC is a biofilm based process. Therefore, it is important to design anode configuration that the bio-electrochemical reaction between bacteria and bulk solution (substrate) should evenly occur on the electrode surface for improving electricity generation. However, there is a limit to decide the optimum MFC design through experiments with a wide range of conditions. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technology makes it possible to evaluate physicochemical phenomenon such as fluid flows, mass transfer and chemical reaction, which can help the system optimization. The flat-typed MFCs (1,000x750x25 mm) installed baffles with different shapes, lengths, thicknesses, numbers, angles, and surface roughnesses were used in this study. The fluid flows were analysed by ANSYS CFX software (Ansys Inc., USA) and the dead and the effective space of anode compartment were calculated. The anodic fluid flows showed different pattern according to the characteristic of baffle and the effective space where the bio-electrochemical reaction can actually occur was diversely observed (0.0092 ~ 0.0463 m3; 0.3179 ~ 0.735 m2). Based on the above results, the power densities (W/m2) were estimated from a monolayer biofilm. The MFC with 18 inner-baffles showed the largest effective space of 0.735 m2 and the maximum power density of 0.71 W/m2. It is limited to optimize MFC configuration with only CFD analysis. However, it is expected to provide a fundamental data for MFC optimization. |