Increasing Desalination by Mitigating Anolyte pH Imbalance Using Catholyte Effluent Addition in a Multi-Anode Bench Scale Microbial Desalination Cell

A microbial desalination cell (MDC) uses exoelectrogenic bacteria to oxidize organic matter while desalinating water. Protons produced from the oxidation of organics at the anode result in anolyte acidification and reduce performance. A new method was used here to mitigate anolyte acidification based on adding non-buffered saline catholyte effluent from a previous cycle to the anolyte at the beginning of the next cycle. This method was tested …