Bioelectro Chemical Systems: A Sustainable and Potential Platform for Treating Waste

Rapid urbanization and industrial growth across the globe has increased the generation of solid, liquid and gaseous wastes. This is leading to the contamination of soils, groundwater, surface water and air with hazardous and toxic chemicals. It is predicted from the’business-as-usual’ projections that the solid-waste generation rates will exceed 11 million tonnes per day by 2100, which is three times more than current rate. On the other hand, the increased wastewater production and its direct discharge into rivers is causing major usable water resource crunch. Carbon dioxide from industrial sources is also ultimate waste product which is major contributor to the climate change.In general, the technologies for disposal of solid, liquid and gaseous waste are less efficient and energy intensive. In the recent years a paradigm shift has taken place towards the outlook of waste disposal and thrust is shifting to use it as a resource for production of energy and commodities. Some of the widely practiced interventions in this direction may be cited as utilization of organic waste and sewerage water for production of methane as a fuel. Although the net energy yields in these conversion processes are generally low but many rapid advancements taking place to overcome these limitations.Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) are emerging as an exciting platform to convert chemical energy of organic wastes into electricity or hydrogen or value added chemical commodities. In BES, specific group of electro-active bacteria can be used as catalyst. Compared to traditional treatment-focused, energy-intensive environmental technologies, this emerging technology offers a sustainable solution for integrated waste treatment and energy and resource recovery, because it offers a flexible platform for both oxidation and reduction reaction oriented processes. In this way, BES works on interface of fermentation and electrochemistry. The applications of BES into waste treatment domain may include, current generation, efficient bioremediation of a wide range of organic wastes, desalination, color removal, toxicity reduction, gaseous pollutants treatment and synthesis of commercially viable chemicals and solvents from CO2 reduction. This paper discusses the current state of the technology and emerging innovations on BES application with respect to solid waste management, wastewater treatment and CO2utilization, including the on-going research at IndianOil R&D centre.