Urine disinfection and in situ pathogen killing using a Microbial Fuel Cell cascade system

Ieropoulos, Ioannis; Pasternak, Grzegorz; Greenman, John

Abstract

© 2017 Ieropoulos et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs) are emerging as an effective means of treating different types of waste including urine and wastewater. However, the fate of pathogens in an MFC-based system remains unknown, and in this study we investigated the effect of introducing the enteric pathogen Salmonella enterica serovar enteritidis in an MFC cascade system. The MFCs continuously fed with urine showed high disinfecting potential. As part of two independent trials, during which the bioluminescent S. enteritidis strain was introduced into the MFC cascade, the number of viable counts and the level of bioluminescence were reduced by up to 4.43-0.04 and 4.21-0.01 log-fold, respectively. The killing efficacy observed for the MFCs operating under closed-circuit conditions, were higher by 1.69 and 1.72 log-fold reduction than for the open circuit MFCs, in both independent trials. The results indicated that the bactericidal properties of a well performing anode were dependent on power performance and the oxidation-reduction potential recorded for the MFCs. This is the first time that the fate of pathogenic bacteria has been investigated in continuously operating MFC systems.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 11, 2017
• Publication Date: May 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: May 9, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: May 9, 2017
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Electronic ISSN: 1932-6203
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 5
• Pages: e0176475
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176475
• Keywords: mfc, mfcs, microbial fuel cell, urine, pathogen killing, cascade, ieropoulos, bbic, bristol bioenergy centre
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/888071
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176475
• Related Public URLs: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176475
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Author Contributions Conceptualization: II JG. Data curation: GP. Formal analysis: GP II. Funding acquisition: II JG. Investigation: GP. Methodology: GP II JG. Project administration: II. Resources: GP. Software: GP. Supervision: II JG. Validation: II GP JG. Visualization: GP II. Writing – original draft: GP II. Writing – review & editing: II GP JG.
• Contract Date: May 9, 2017