Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2025 Mar 7;16(3):312.
doi: 10.3390/mi16030312.

Integrated Wastewater Remediation and Energy Production: Microfluidic Photocatalytic Fuel Cells Enabled by Dye Pollutants

Youquan Zhou  1   2 , Fangzhou Luo  1 , Zhichao Wang  1 , Jiayi Zhu  1 , Hao Yang  3
Affiliations

Integrated Wastewater Remediation and Energy Production: Microfluidic Photocatalytic Fuel Cells Enabled by Dye Pollutants

Youquan Zhou et al. Micromachines (Basel). .

Abstract

Directly degrading the dyes in the wastewater is a missed opportunity. Herein, we propose a solution employing a microfluidic chip to construct a photocatalytic fuel cell (PFC) system, which can efficiently degrade tetracycline while generating electricity simultaneously under visible-light irradiation. This approach utilizes the photogenerated electrons from the dye Rhodamine B (RhB), which are effectively transferred through a gold layer to activate persulfate in water, leading to enhanced tetracycline degradation. Experimental results reveal that within one hour of reaction duration, the degradation efficiency of tetracycline within the PFC system was doubled. At a persulfate (PS) concentration of 2 mM, the system's open-circuit voltage and short-circuit photocurrent density reached 0.26 V and 0.00239 mA·cm-2 respectively, both exceeding the values detected at 0.5 mM PS. Additionally, the system's power density was triple that at 0.5 mM PS. Notably, when the PS concentration in the system was elevated from 0.5 mM to 2 mM, the degradation efficiency of tetracycline witnessed a significant boost from 35.16% to 60.78%. This approach proffers a novel tactic for harnessing dye waste via microfluidic devices. The PFC system accomplishes not only the degradation of dyes and antibiotics but also the generation of electrical energy, substantially enhancing the energy utilization efficiency.

Keywords: RhB; antibiotic degradation; photocatalytic fuel cells.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Author Hao Yang was employed by the company Wuhan Fibers Technology Co., LTD. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) The schematic diagram of the PFC, (b) the internal structure of the microchannel, (c) the design of the glass substrate with gold-plated electrodes, and (d) the prepared PFC device.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) Schematic diagram of the test system, (b) physical diagram of the test system, and (c) the reaction mechanisms of PFC systems.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) The degradation of TC by the photoexcited RhB/PS system, (b) the absorption spectra of the solution before and after the reaction, and degradation efficiency of tetracycline at different (c) flow rates, (d) light intensities, (e) PS concentrations, and (f) sodium sulfate concentrations in a microfluidic chip.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The polarization curve of the system under different (a) flow rate, (c) light intensities, (e) PS concentrations, and (g) sodium sulfate concentrations, and the power density curve of the system under different (b) flow rates, (d) light intensities, (f) PS concentrations, and (h) sodium sulfate concentrations.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Open-circuit voltage–time plot.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Huang A., Zhang N., Wang Q.-B., Zhao B.-H., Zhang R.-B., Cheng M., Shi C., Hao X.-D. Enhanced wastewater treatment using biochar-supported layered-double-hydroxide composites. Chem. Eng. J. 2025;506:159969. doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2025.159969. - DOI
    1. Peng C., Wu Z., Zhang S., Lin B., Nie L., Tian W., Zang H. Online monitoring of water quality in industrial wastewater treatment process based on near-infrared spectroscopy. Water Res. 2025;275:123165. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2025.123165. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Zheng Z., Tian S., Feng Y., Zhao S., Li X., Wang S., He Z. Recent advances of photocatalytic coupling technologies for wastewater treatment. Chin. J. Catal. 2023;54:88–136. doi: 10.1016/S1872-2067(23)64536-X. - DOI
    1. Lu Z., Xu Y., Akbari M.Z., Liang C., Peng L. Insight into integration of photocatalytic and microbial wastewater treatment technologies for recalcitrant organic pollutants: From sequential to simultaneous reactions. Chemosphere. 2022;295:133952. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2022.133952. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Liu Y., Yu Y., Li J., Zhu X., Ye D., Yang Y., Pan Z., Chen R., Liao Q. Enhanced performance and stability of sulfite/sulfide-assisted photocatalytic fuel cell with CdS@TNTs/Ti mesh photoanode. Chem. Eng. J. 2025;506:160038. doi: 10.1016/j.cej.2025.160038. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources