Research Article Application of Electro-Fenton Technology to Remediation of Polluted Effluents by Self-Sustaining Process Maria Ángeles Fernández de Dios, Olaia Iglesias, Marta Pazos, and Maria Ángeles Sanromán Chemical Engineering Department, University of Vigo, Isaac Newton Building, Campus As Lagoas, Marcosende, 36310 Vigo, Spain Correspondence should be addressed to Maria ´ Angeles Sanrom´ an; sanroman@uvigo.es Received 19 December 2013; Accepted 20 January 2014; Published 26 February 2014 Academic Editors: X. Hu, W. K. Jo, Y. S. Ok, Y. Xu, and M. Zarei Copyright © 2014 Maria ´ Angeles Fern´ andez de Dios et al. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Te applicability of electro-Fenton technology to remediation of wastewater contaminated by several organic pollutants such as dyes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons has been evaluated using iron-enriched zeolite as heterogeneous catalyst. Te electro- Fenton technology is an advanced oxidation process that is efcient for the degradation of organic pollutants, but it sufers from the high operating costs due to the need for power investment. For this reason, in this study microbial fuel cells (MFCs) were designed in order to supply electricity to electro-Fenton processes and to achieve high treatment efciency at low cost. Initially, the efect of key parameters on the MFC power generation was evaluated. Aferwards, the degradation of Reactive Black 5 dye and phenanthrene was evaluated in an electro-Fenton reactor, containing iron-enriched zeolite as catalyst, using the electricity supplied by the MFC. Near complete dye decolourization and 78% of phenanthrene degradation were reached afer 90 min and 30 h, respectively. Furthermore, preliminary reusability tests of the developed catalyst showed high degradation levels for successive cycles. Te results permit concluding that the integrated system is adequate to achieve high treatment efciency with low electrical consumption. 1. Introduction Green remediation reduces the demand placed on the environment during clean-up actions and avoids potential collateral environmental damage. Tus, the implementation of efective technologies for the remediation of hazardous organic pollutants in wastewaters plays a fundamental role. Terefore, this study focuses on the reduction of energy demand of the electro-Fenton degradation process by inte- gration of alternative energy sources such as microbial fuel cells (MFCs). In the last years, diferent advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have proved to assess powerful oxidative techniques for several organic pollutants [1]. Te AOPs depend on the in situ generation of hydroxyl radicals ( ∙ OH), a highly powerful oxidizing agent. Tese species are more efective oxidants ( 0 = +2.8 V) than the chemical reagents commonly adopted for this purpose, hypochlorous acid and permanganate ( 0 ≈ +1.5 V), and H 2 O 2 ( 0 = +1.8 V). Among the diferent AOPs, several researches have demonstrated that the electro-Fenton process is a promising technology to be more economical, efcient, and environ- mentally friendly to remove organic matter compared with conventional procedures [2–9]. In this process, the H 2 O 2 is produced electrochemically via oxygen reduction on the cathode; then, the addition of ferrous ion into the system analogously generates the ∙ OH radicals in the classical Fen- ton’s reaction. On the other hand, in this process, the ferrous ion is regenerated at the cathode, reducing its addition in comparison to the traditional Fenton’s process [10]. Recently, the application of the electro-Fenton tech- nology with iron heterogeneous catalysts has attracted the attention of diferent research groups [11–13]. Te use of iron heterogeneous catalysts facilitates the reuse of iron; thereby several organic and inorganic matrixes have been used in order to obtain a stable iron catalyst to be used in heterogeneous Fenton reactions. In this feld, our research group has recently made great progress and iron has been Hindawi Publishing Corporation e Scientific World Journal Volume 2014, Article ID 801870, 8 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/801870