In recent years, due to rapid globalization and urbanization, the demand for fuels, energy, water and nutrients has been continuously increasing. To meet the future need of the society, wastewater is a prominent and emerging source for resource recovery. It provides an opportunity to recover valuable resources in the form of energy, fertilizers, electricity, nutrients and other products. The aim of this review is to elaborate the scientific literature on the valorization of wastewater using wide range of treatment technologies and reduce the existing knowledge gap in the field of resource recovery and water reuse. Several versatile, resilient environmental techniques/technologies such as ion exchange, bioelectrochemical, adsorption, electrodialysis, solvent extraction, etc. are employed for the extraction of value-added products from waste matrices. Since the last two decades, valuable resources such as polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), matrix or polymers, cellulosic fibers, syngas, biodiesel, electricity, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, enzymes and a wide range of platform chemicals have been recovered from wastewater. In this review, the aspects related to the persisting global water issues, the technologies used for the recovery of different products and/or by-products, economic sustainability of the technologies and the challenges encountered during the valorization of wastewater are discussed comprehensively.
Keywords: Bioelectrochemical; Energy; Nutrient; Resource recovery; Sustainable development; Wastewater treatment.
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