Contaminant Removal and Resource Recovery in Bioelectrochemical Wastewater Treatment

Zhiming Zhang, Dibyendu Sarkar, Liang Li, Rupali Datta

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Bioelectrochemical system (BES) is an emerging technology for wastewater treatment. The urgent requirement for dealing with water shortage, wastewater treatment and reuse, energy generation, and resources recovery has promoted intensive research in BES during the last decade. This review summarizes the latest typical BES configurations based on specific functions, including microbial fuel cells (MFC), microbial electrolysis cells (MEC), microbial electrosynthesis systems (MSS), microbial desalination cells (MDC), microbial recycling cells (MRC), microbial solar cells (MSC), and microbial electrochemical snorkel (MES). The removal of contaminants, particularly emerging organic, non-metallic, metallic, and metalloid contaminants, and the recovery of resources in the form of bioenergy, biofuel, nutrients, metals, and metalloids in wastewater treatment using BES technology have been reviewed in this work. Limitations of BES technology in terms of reactor performance, scale-up, and construction costs for real-world wastewater treatment applications are discussed and future research directions needed for the successful deployment of BES technology are proposed.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)159-176
Number of pages18
JournalCurrent Pollution Reports
Volume8
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2022

Keywords

  • Bioelectrochemical system
  • Bioenergy and biofuel recovery
  • Contaminant removal
  • Metals and metalloids recovery
  • Nutrients recovery
  • Wastewater treatment

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