INTEGRATED WETLAND-BIOFUEL CELL FOR SEAFOOD EFFLUENT MANAGEMENT

The increasing industrialization has led to environmental pollution due to high quantity of emission of effluents to the natural resources. The main purpose of this research effort is to develop a waste treatment method for seafood industries waste management and also to produce electricity by introducing a developing technology i.e., constructed wetland coupled with a biofuel cell. Constructed wetlands are engineered systems mimicking natural wetlands for wastewater treatment. They utilize water, aquatic plants (like water hyacinth), native microorganisms, and filter beds (sand, soil, or gravel). Biofuel cells, a rapidly growing green technology, harness microorganisms to convert the chemical energy in organic matter into electricity while simultaneously treating wastewater. This paper focused on characterizing the influent from seafood processing. Various tests were conducted on the effluent before and after treatment with the constructed wetland-biofuel cell system. These tests analyzed factors like pH, alkalinity, hardness, Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) and conductivity. The Seafood effluent treatment proposed using this technology highly minimize the operational cost, energy utilisation and reduction in effluent discharges with high organic concentrations into the natural resources. Post the treatments the effluents can be released directly into natural resources or can be used for gardening, agriculture, planting etc.