Diseño y ejecución de un prototipo de celda de combustible microbiana para el tratamiento de aguas residuales y generación de gas metano a partir de residuos en una vivienda rural promedio en el departamento de Boyacá.

Abstract

After the changes that have occurred in the world after the modernization and commercialization of our life in society, rural areas have been seriously affected, since the quality of life that the vast majority of inhabitants have is low, due to the lack of public services such as the collection and management of wastewater and the supply of natural gas. This is why the implementation of individual, efficient, economical and long-lasting technologies have become a sustainable alternative to meet these needs in hard-to-reach areas. This is the case of microbial fuel cells, which generate electrical energy through the transport of electrons, from bacterial processes that effectively contribute to the treatment of wastewater of different origin, since they also produce methane gas from the process’s fermentation. In this research, a laboratory-scale prototype of a bacterial fuel cell was designed to treat wastewater from rural homes and obtain energy and methane gas generation from the processes carried out. For this, the physical-chemical characterization of the wastewater was carried out before and after the treatment process and the potential that the waste of an average house has to generate methane was determined, in the same way, variables called independent were modified to increase the efficiency of the cell, which in turn is evidenced in the dependent variables; in order to obtain in its effluent with permissible values established by Resolution 631 of 2015. During the development of the experimental phases, the maximum voltage generation was in the cells of Phase IV with a value of 379.5 mV. In the same way the greatest reduction in the Biological Oxygen Demand was obtained in this phase with a removal percentage of 89, 8% for the Cathode and 65.1% for the Anode. It was concluded that the optimum combination of substrates for power generation was bovine feces and domestic wastewater, and the optimal electrode area was 0.02833 m2 for a volume of 1 liter. Likewise, an increase in the volume of the cell must be directly related to the number of electrodes and the area of the membrane to be used. Besides it is necessary to perform a fast and efficient acclimatization of the substrates to shorten the time to obtain an exponential phase in the generation of energy and methane gas.