On-line monitoring of minor oil spills in natural waters using sediment microbial fuel cell sensors equipped with vertical floating cathodes

Oil spills near natural water bodies pose considerable threats to aquatic ecosystem and drinking water system. Various detection techniques have been developed to identify the oil pollution in natural waters. These techniques mainly focus on large and major oil spills involving significant changes in environmental characteristics. However, monitoring of minor oil spills (from seepage and dripping) in waters remains a bottleneck, allowing inconspicuous and persistent oil contamination. To overcome this drawback, a sediment microbial fuel cell (SMFC) sensor equipped with a vertical floating cathode is developed for on-line and in-situ monitoring of minor oil spills in natural waters. The vertical floating cathode was intended for recognizing oil on water surface. Oil on the cathode will trigger current drop. Two kinds of natural sediments were adopted in two sensors (SMFC1 from a lake and SMFC2 from an urban stream) for comparison. Both showed linear relationship between net steady-state current decrease and oil dose (30.78 and 27.29 μA/mL of sensitivity, respectively). The current change process was fitted well to a pseudo-first order kinetic equation. A one-point/two-point dynamic identification methods were derived from the kinetic equation. Therefore, the detection time was shortened from 10 h to 10/30 min. The triggered current decrease was mainly attributed to the increase in internal resistance related to charge and mass transfer. Despite the power loss after oil contamination, results implied SMFC sensor could still achieve self-sustainability. This study shows that the SMFC sensor with vertical floating cathodes is applicable to monitoring the unnoticeable minor oil pollutions in natural waters. © 2021 Elsevier B.V.