Evaluating Microplastic Effects on Performance and Electrochemistry of Microbial Fuel Cells for Wastewater Treatment

Microplastics (MPs) that are contained in water pose a great threat to the ecological environment, because they have the potential to biomagnify in the food chain, which negatively affects higher trophic level animals that include humans. In addition, they could adsorb several contaminants onto their surface due to their high adsorption capability, which poses a great risk of diseases in higher life forms. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can simultaneously treat MP-containing wastewater and produce value-added by-products in the form of bioelectricity; therefore, recent research is more focused on this area. This work explored the effect of MPs on chemical oxygen demand (COD) reduction, power production, and an electrochemical behavior study of the system with cyclic voltammetry (CV). The results of this work show that MPs in low concentrations (25–400 mg/L) in synthetic wastewater treatment had a more positive effect on COD reduction and power production than synthetic wastewater with no MPs and 1,000 mg/L MP.