A critical review on an advanced bio-electrochemical system for carbon dioxide sequestration and wastewater treatment

Abstract

Recently, air and water pollution have become a worldwide issue that has a negative impact on the climate as well as human health. Rapid urbanization and the dispersion of industrial plants have an impact on environmental damage by discharging contaminants into the environmental systems. Bio-electrochemical systems (BESs) are novel techniques for transforming chemical energy to electrical energy (and vice versa) via microbes as catalysts. Some advanced novel green technology based on BESs, such as microbial carbon fuel cells (MCCs), plant-based microbial fuel cells (P-MFCs), and microbial electro-synthesis cells (MESs), can contribute to cleaning the environment by sequestering carbon dioxide (CO₂) while also producing value-added products from wastewater and CO₂. Treatment of wastewater with the generation of bioenergy and bio-fuel recovery is another additional benefit of using advanced BESs. In this review report, we realised that the MCCs have high coulombic efficiency and electricity generation capacity, while the MESs has high CO₂ sequestration efficiency. P-MFCs, on the other hand, have a high contamination removal capacity. However, there is no doubt that the MCCs, P-MFCs, and MESs systems have additional benefits, which are primarily based on the self-sustaining nature of microorganisms and other factors. This review explored the possible use of MCCs, P-MFCs, and MESs for wastewater treatment with electricity generation, reducing the CO₂ and production of value-added products. Numerous parameters influencing BESs efficiency must be optimized for developing these technologies, while challenges and future directions are also discussed.