Abstract
Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) have been extensively studied for resource recovery from wastewater. By taking advantage of interactions between microorganisms and electrodes, BES can accomplish wastewater treatment while simultaneously recovering various resources including nutrients, energy and water (“NEW”). Despite much progress in laboratory studies, BES have not been advanced to practical applications. This paper aims to provide some subjective opinions and a concise discussion of several key challenges in BES-based resource recovery and help identify the potential application niches that may guide further technological development. In addition to further increasing recovery efficiency, it is also important to have more focus on the applications of the recovered resources such as how to use the harvested electricity and gaseous energy and how to separate the recovered nutrients in an energy-efficient way. A change in mindset for energy performance of BES is necessary to understand overall energy production and consumption. Scaling up BES can go through laboratory scale, transitional scale, and then pilot scale. Using functions as driving forces for BES research and development will better guide the investment of efforts.
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This work was supported by Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS), Virginia Tech.
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Dr. Zhen (Jason) He is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He received a BS from Tongji University, a MS from Technical University of Denmark, and a PhD from Washington University in St. Louis, all in Environmental Engineering. Then he completed a 2-year postdoctoral training at University of Southern California before joining the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee as an Assistant Professor in 2009. Four year later, he moved to Virginia Tech as a tenured Associated Professor. In 2017 he was promoted to a Full Professor. He is directing the Environmental Biotechnology & Bioenergy Laboratory with a focus on resource recovery from wastes/wastewater. The ongoing research projects in his lab include bioelectrochemcial systems for wastewater treatment, forward osmosis, nutrient removal and recovery, and algal bioreactors. He has published over 170 journal papers, which have been cited for more than 9,000 times with an H-index of 47 (Google Scholar). He has received 3 granted US patents. In 2017, he established Virginia Tech Center for Applied Water Research and Innovations (CAWRI) as an inaugural director. He was also the 2017 President of Chinese-American Professors in Environmental Engineering and Science (CAPEES). He is currently the Vice Chair of the Research and Innovation Committee underWater Environment Federation (WEF). In 2018, Dr. He was selected to receive Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize from American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He is an Associate Editor for three journals: Science of the Total Environment,Water Environment Research, and Journal of Environmental Engineering. He is also a Member of Editorial Board for Chemical Engineering Journal and Data in Brief, and a Member of Advisory Board for Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.
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Jain, A., He, Z. “NEW” resource recovery from wastewater using bioelectrochemical systems: Moving forward with functions. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 12, 1 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-018-1052-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-018-1052-9