Increasing global energy demands and the threat of fossil-fuel depletion, environmental pollution, shortage of water and other resource are driving intensive efforts towards developing new technologies for sustainable treatment and utilization of wastewater. Wastewater contains many valuable sources and among them, Nutrient, Energy and Water, or “NEW”, are critically important and have a wide range of potential applications, especially in the food production. Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) and forward osmosis (FO) are two state-of-the-art water/wastewater technologies that may play important roles in addressing the challenges of NEW recovery. BES relies on microbial interaction with the solid electron acceptor/donor to accomplish bioenergy recovery from organic compounds, and FO can extract high-quality water driven by an osmotic pressure.  The integration of BES and FO creates osmotic bioelectrochemical systems (OsBES), which takes advantage of both technologies and complements each other to address NEW recovery. This work has reviewed the recent development of OsBES and the current status of research efforts with a focus on NEW recovery. Basic principles of BES/FO, configurations of OsBES, and mutual benefits were introduced. We have provided an in-depth analysis about the NEW recovery in various types of OsBES and discussed future efforts to be made for realizing sustainable wastewater treatment. The perspectives and challenges have also been discussed to systematically formulate a strategy of potentially practical OsBES application and provide information to guide OsBES development.

Nutrient-energy-water (NEW) recovery by osmotic bioelectrochemical systems towards sustainable wastewater treatment

254th National Meeting (2017)

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