Description: Industrial wastewater contains a large variety of compounds, such as hazardous organic pollutants, heavy metals, salts and nutrients, which makes its treatment challenging. On the other hand, the sewage treatment with existing technologies is not cost-effective due to high energy demand and contributes to greenhouse gas emission. Thus, the use of conventional water treatment methods is neither sustainable nor always effective. In this sense, BESs has emerged as a promising technology to treat complex industrial wastewater with a sustainable manner. Development in Wastewater Treatment Research and Processes: Bioelectrochemical Systems for Wastewater Management analyses and discusses the potential of microbial and electrochemical based hybrid processes for the treatment of complex industrial wastewater along with the recovery of valuable compounds and water reutilization. The most significant advantages of BES are high effectiveness, low toxicity, gentle operation conditions, environmentally friendly treatment without sludge accumulation and energy conservation. 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 addition, recent and future trends in BES are highlighted.
Brief description: Susana Rodríguez-Couto is a professor in biological water treatment at LUT University, Finland. She got her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemistry (Industrial Chemistry) from the University of Santiago de Compostela in 1992 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1999 from the University of Vigo, obtaining the maximal grade (magna cum laude) and, in addition, she was awarded with the Extraordinary Prize for Doctoral Thesis in Chemistry. She worked as an Associate Professor and an Isidro Parga Pondal Senior Researcher at the University of Vigo (2000-2004), as a Ramón y Cajal Senior Researcher at Rovira i Virgili University (2004-2008) and as an Ikerbasque Research Professor (2009-2019). She has also worked as an Invited Researcher at the Institute from Environmental Biotechnology, Graz University of Technology (Austria) and at the Department of Biological Engineering, University of Minho (Portugal). In 2008, she received the I3 Professor from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education to the recognition of an outstanding research activity. She has published more than 140 articles in highly reputed international journals (h index 42). She is editor of several journals (3Biotech, Frontiers) and 14 Elsevier books.