Abstract
The world is facing serious threats from the depletion of non-renewable energy resources, freshwater shortages and food scarcity. As the world population grows, the demand for fresh water, energy, and food will increase, and the need for treating and recycling wastewater will rise. In the past decade, wastewater has been recognized as a resource as it primarily consists of water, energy-latent organics and nutrients. Microbial fuel cells (MFC) have attracted considerable attention due to their versatility in their applications in wastewater treatment, power generation, toxic pollutant removal, environmental monitoring sensors, and more. This article provides a review of MFC technologies applied to the removal and/or recovery of nutrients (such as P and N), organics (COD), and bioenergy (as electricity) from various wastewaters. This review aims to provide the current perspective on MFCs, focusing on the recent advancements in the areas of nutrient removal and/or recovery with simultaneous power generation.
Highlights
Water, energy, and food are essential for all living forms to survive and thrive, and they are inseparably linked
This review paper presented and discussed published studies on the different types of Microbial fuel cells (MFC) that have been used for resource recovery from various wastewaters
This review especially focused on the removal and recovery of phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N), and organics (COD)
Summary
Energy, and food are essential for all living forms to survive and thrive, and they are inseparably linked. Humans have made great strides in securing those resources, the world is facing an uphill battle due largely to the increasing human population and climate change. The world is expected to face 40% freshwater and 36% energy shortages [1,2], together with increasing demand for food [3,4] and treatment of wastewater. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
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