As a new membrane technology, forward osmosis (FO) has aroused more and more interest in the field of wastewater treatment and recovery in recent years. Due to the driving force of osmotic pressure rather than hydraulic pressure, FO is considered as a low pollution process, thus saving costs and energy. In addition, due to the high rejection rate of FO membrane to various pollutants, it can obtain higher quality pure water. Recovering valuable resources from wastewater will transform wastewater management from a treatment focused to sustainability focused strategy, creating the need for new technology development. An innovative treatment concept which is based on cooperation between bioelectrochemical systems and forward osmosis has been introduced and studied in the past few years. Bioelectrochemical systems can provide draw solute, perform pre-treatment, or reduce reverse salt flux to help with FO operation; while FO can achieve water recovery, enhance current generation, and supply energy sources for the operation of bioelectrochemical systems. This paper reviews the past research, describes the principle, development history, as well as quantitative analysis, and discusses the prospects of OsMFC technology, focusing on the recovery of resources from wastewater, especially the research progress and existing problems of forward osmosis technology and microbial fuel cell coupling technology. Moreover, the future development trends of this technology were prospected, so as to promote the application of forward osmosis technology in sewage treatment and resource synchronous recovery.
Keywords: bioelectrochemical systems; energy recovery; forward osmosis; potential applications.