ABSTRACT
Nowadays, wastewater is considered to be a vital alternative water resources, best water management practice as well as being energy saving. The conventional wastewater treatment technologies have multiple limitations, such as high energy costs, large quantities of residuals being generated, sludge disposal and lacking in potential resources which demand an alternative technology. Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) have gained in interest as an alternative green energy technology which includes energy generation and wastewater treatment simultaneously. BES employs electrochemically active microbes to convert the organic matter into electricity with other valued added products and thus leads to wastewater treatment including Chemical oxygen demand (COD), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) removal, and so on. In contrast, the BES is categorized based on the applications such as electricity generation (Microbial Fuel Cell), Biohydrogen (Microbial Electrolysis Cell), metal removal (Microbial remediation cell) water desalination (Microbial Desalination Cell) and so on. Several factors, including wastewater concentration, pH, electrode, reactor configuration, membrane, and so on, influence the performance of BES. Despite the advantages of this technology, there are still practical limitations to consider such as low energy generation, higher internal resistance and materials cost. Hence, this chapter describes the principles, electrons transfer mechanism, development of anode, cathode, membrane, and reactor design towards the practical challenges of utilizing the BES system.
