An IoT-Enabled Microbial Fuel Cell for Wastewater Treatment and Enhancing Hydroponic Systems: An Eco-Friendly Renewable Energy Development

Chemical manufacturing, textile processing, and other industrial activities have increased the importance of effective wastewater treatment. This study gives a systematic look at how well an artificially ventilated tidal flow Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC) wetland system cleans the water. The system uses IoT monitoring to continuously collect data on the MFC's performance, which can be used to optimize the system for wastewater treatment and energy generation. Integrating IoT monitoring with the ESP8266-12 and ADS1115 improves real-time evaluation and makes it possible to keep improving the performance of MFCs for efficient treatment of wastewater and production of energy. The main feature of this system is that - (i) it can generate electricity. Secondly, (ii) it has waste disposal facilities, and (iii) the chemical elements of wastewater can produce hydroponic plants. The study used three materials: Jhama brick, brick surkhi, and rubber tire fragments. By testing NH4_N, N02_N, N03_N, TN, TSS, TKN, BOD, and COD. The experiment results show that TKN (65.8%) and TN (76.9%) removed the most nitrogen due to better nitrification-denitrification and media-oriented chemical adsorption. The highest pollutant and coliform removed were found at around 87.5% and 95.09% of COD, respectively. The proposed system can produce bioenergy with a maximum voltage of 142 mV, a maximum current density of 27.85 mA/m3, and a maximum power density of 3954.03 mW/m3. Pollutant removal was highest when jhama brick was used as a medium in MFC and lowest when rubber tire fragments were used.