Strategies for sustainable wastewater treatment based on energy recovery and emerging compounds control: a mini-review

摘要

Wastewater treatment contributes significantly to protect human health and ecological safety. With sustainable development of wastewater treatment, recovery of resources and energy from wastewater has been the focus for conventional contaminants, while reduction and control of ecological toxicity is the focus for emerging compounds. Under anaerobic conditions, especially with the enhancement of direct interspecies electron transfer, methanogenesis and/or nitrous oxide production could be achieved separately or simultaneously, and the removal efficiency of some types of emerging compounds could be improved. During nitritation, both nitrogen and emerging compounds removal could be achieved simultaneously. Therefore, a new wastewater treatment concept based on recovery of energy and control of emerging compounds was proposed, including the anaerobic treatment process by incorporating directly electron transfer enhancement and nitritation-based nitrogen removal. The proposed strategy provided a new technology concept for advancing the sustainable development of wastewater treatment through recovery of energy and control of emerging compounds.