Abstract
Waste water containing 4 g/l of date paste (molasses) was used as a substrate in microbial fuel cell system composed of anode and cathode electrodes made of carbon cloth using two arrangements; in the first the anode is in parallel to cathode horizontally while the other one the cathode was above the anode vertically. The benefit of such system is by using the generated power as a source for treatment of waste water as well as other energy usages. The results showed that the second arrangement gave better values of power of about 122 ?W during 20 hours of operation compared to 115 ?W power harvested from the first arrangements for the same period of time. While a reduction of about 67% in COD from its initial value after an elapsed of 100 hours of operation using the second arrangement was captured, after that the system was falling down quickly due to depletion of molasses and due to film formation, limitation of mass transfer and others.