Treatment of Oil Wastewater and Electricity Generation by Integrating Constructed Wetland with Microbial Fuel Cell

Conventional oil sewage treatment methods can achieve satisfactory removal efficiency, but energy consumption problems during the process of oil sewage treatment are worth attention. The integration of a constructed wetland reactor and a microbial fuel cell reactor (CW-MFC) to treat oil-contaminated wastewater, compared with a microbial fuel cell reactor (MFC) alone and a constructed wetland reactor (CW) alone, was explored in this research. Performances of the three reactors including chemical oxygen demand (COD), oil removal, and output voltage generation were continuously monitored. The COD removals of three reactors were between 73% and 75%, and oil removals were over 95.7%. Compared with MFC, the CW-MFC with a MnO₂ modified cathode produced higher power density and output voltage. Maximum power densities of CW-MFC and MFC were 3868 mW/m³ (102 mW/m²) and 3044 mW/m³ (80 mW/m²), respectively. The plants in CW-MFC play a positive role for reactor cathode potential. Both plants and cathode modification can improve reactor performance of electricity generation.