Transitioning wastewater treatment plants toward circular economy and energy sustainability

Abstract

Aging infrastructure, increasing environmental regulations, and receiving water environment issues stem the need for advanced wastewater treatment processes across the world. Advanced wastewater treatment systems treat wastewater beyond organic carbon removal and aim to remove nutrients and recover valuable products. While the removal of major nutrients (carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus) is essential for environmental protection, this can only be achieved through energy-, chemical-, and cost-intensive processes in the industry today, which is an unsustainable trend, considering the global population growth and rapid urbanization. Two major routes for developing more sustainable and circular-economy-based wastewater treatment systems would be to (a) innovate and integrate energy- and resource-efficient anaerobic wastewater treatment systems and (b) enhance carbon capture to be diverted to energy recovery schemes. This Mini-Review provides a critical evaluation and perspective of two potential process routes that enable this transition. These process routes include a bioelectrochemical energy recovery scheme and codigestion of organic sludge for biogas generation in anaerobic digesters. From the analysis, it is imperative that integrating both concepts may even result in more energy- and resource-efficient wastewater treatment systems.