IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natsus/v1y2018i12d10.1038_s41893-018-0187-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wastewater treatment for carbon capture and utilization

Author

Listed:
  • Lu Lu

    (Princeton University
    Princeton University
    University of Colorado Boulder)

  • Jeremy S. Guest

    (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

  • Catherine A. Peters

    (Princeton University)

  • Xiuping Zhu

    (Louisiana State University)

  • Greg H. Rau

    (University of California)

  • Zhiyong Jason Ren

    (Princeton University
    Princeton University
    University of Colorado Boulder)

Abstract

A paradigm shift is underway in wastewater treatment as the industry heads toward ~3% of global electricity consumption and contributes ~1.6% of greenhouse gas emissions. Although incremental improvements to energy efficiency and renewable energy recovery are underway, studies considering wastewater for carbon capture and utilization are few. This Review summarizes alternative wastewater treatment pathways capable of simultaneous CO2 capture and utilization, and demonstrates the environmental and economic benefits of microbial electrochemical and phototrophic processes. Preliminary estimates demonstrate that re-envisioning wastewater treatment may entirely offset the industry’s greenhouse gas footprint and make it a globally significant contributor of negative carbon emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Lu Lu & Jeremy S. Guest & Catherine A. Peters & Xiuping Zhu & Greg H. Rau & Zhiyong Jason Ren, 2018. "Wastewater treatment for carbon capture and utilization," Nature Sustainability, Nature, vol. 1(12), pages 750-758, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natsus:v:1:y:2018:i:12:d:10.1038_s41893-018-0187-9
    DOI: 10.1038/s41893-018-0187-9
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-018-0187-9
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41893-018-0187-9?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Leyuan Zhang & Yucheng Zhang & Yang Liu & Sibo Wang & Calvin K. Lee & Yu Huang & Xiangfeng Duan, 2024. "High power density redox-mediated Shewanella microbial flow fuel cells," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    2. Wang, Hui & Zeng, Shufang & Pan, Xiaoli & Liu, Lei & Chen, Yunjie & Tang, Jiawei & Luo, Feng, 2022. "Bioelectrochemically assisting anaerobic digestion enhanced methane production under low-temperature," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 1071-1083.
    3. Liu, Wenjie & Liu, Xingchen & Xin, Shuaishuai & Wang, Yanhao & Huo, Siyue & Fu, Wenxian & Zhao, Quanyou & Gao, Mengchun & Xie, Haijiao, 2024. "Photocatalytic fuel cell assisted by Fenton-like reaction for p-Chloronitrobenzen degradation and electricity production through S-scheme heterojunction C3N5 modified TNAs photoanode: Performance, DFT," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 358(C).
    4. Zhu, Wenjing & Duan, Cuncun & Chen, Bin, 2024. "Energy efficiency assessment of wastewater treatment plants in China based on multiregional input–output analysis and data envelopment analysis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 356(C).
    5. Xu, Jiuping & Zhao, Chuandang & Wang, Fengjuan & Yang, Guocan, 2022. "Industrial decarbonisation oriented distributed renewable generation towards wastewater treatment sector: Case from the Yangtze River Delta region in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 256(C).
    6. Shenghua Wang & Dake Zhang & Wu Wang & Jun Zhong & Kai Feng & Zhiyi Wu & Boyu Du & Jiaqing He & Zhengwen Li & Le He & Wei Sun & Deren Yang & Geoffrey A. Ozin, 2022. "Grave-to-cradle upcycling of Ni from electroplating wastewater to photothermal CO2 catalysis," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-11, December.
    7. He, Yanying & Li, Yiming & Li, Xuecheng & Liu, Yingrui & Wang, Yufen & Guo, Haixiao & Hou, Jiaqi & Zhu, Tingting & Liu, Yiwen, 2023. "Net-zero greenhouse gas emission from wastewater treatment: Mechanisms, opportunities and perspectives," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    8. Jianan Gao & Qingquan Ma & Zhiwei Wang & Bruce E. Rittmann & Wen Zhang, 2024. "Direct electrosynthesis and separation of ammonia and chlorine from waste streams via a stacked membrane-free electrolyzer," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    9. Xu, Ting & Song, Jianan & Lin, Weichen & Fu, Boya & Guo, Xingguo & Huang, Xia & Wu, Hui & Zhang, Xiaoyuan, 2021. "A freestanding carbon submicro fiber sponge as high-efficient bioelectrochemical anode for wastewater energy recovery and treatment," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 281(C).
    10. Beiying Li & Conghe Liu & Jingjing Bai & Yikun Huang & Run Su & Yan Wei & Bin Ma, 2024. "Strategy to mitigate substrate inhibition in wastewater treatment systems," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    11. Xiang Gao & Zhichao Yang & Wen Zhang & Bingcai Pan, 2024. "Carbon redirection via tunable Fenton-like reactions under nanoconfinement toward sustainable water treatment," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    12. Xiong, Yu-Tong & Zhang, Jing & Chen, You-Peng & Guo, Jin-Song & Fang, Fang & Yan, Peng, 2021. "Geographic distribution of net-zero energy wastewater treatment in China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    13. Qi Dang & Wei Zhang & Jiqing Liu & Liting Wang & Deli Wu & Dejin Wang & Zhendong Lei & Liang Tang, 2023. "Bias-free driven ion assisted photoelectrochemical system for sustainable wastewater treatment," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-13, December.
    14. Lin, Richen & O'Shea, Richard & Deng, Chen & Wu, Benteng & Murphy, Jerry D., 2021. "A perspective on the efficacy of green gas production via integration of technologies in novel cascading circular bio-systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    15. Bong Jae Lee & Jeong Il Lee & Soo Young Yun & Cheol-Soo Lim & Young-Kwon Park, 2020. "Economic Evaluation of Carbon Capture and Utilization Applying the Technology of Mineral Carbonation at Coal-Fired Power Plant," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(15), pages 1-14, July.
    16. Zhao, Chuandang & Xu, Jiuping & Wang, Fengjuan & Xie, Guo & Tan, Cheng, 2024. "Economic–environmental trade-offs based support policy towards optimal planning of wastewater heat recovery," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 364(C).
    17. Bin Chen & Hailiang Li & Rongfu Huang & Yanan Tang & Feng Li, 2024. "Deep learning prediction of electrospray ionization tandem mass spectra of chemically derived molecules," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-10, December.
    18. Ryu, Kyung Hwan & Kim, Boeun & Heo, Seongmin, 2022. "Sustainability analysis framework based on global market dynamics: A carbon capture and utilization industry case," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    19. Yuhan Zhang & Yongbin Wang & Zhibin Chen & Chengzhi Hu & Jiuhui Qu, 2024. "Recovering nutrients and unblocking the cake layer of an electrochemical anaerobic membrane bioreactor," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    20. Hong-Zhi Liu & Xiao-Xuan Shu & Mingjie Huang & Bing-Bing Wu & Jie-Jie Chen & Xi-Sheng Wang & Hui-Lin Li & Han-Qing Yu, 2024. "Tailoring d-band center of high-valent metal-oxo species for pollutant removal via complete polymerization," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-11, December.
    21. Shuai Nie & Guotian Cai & Yixuan Li & Yushu Chen & Ruxue Bai & Liping Gao & Xiaoyu Chen, 2022. "To Adopt CCU Technology or Not? An Evolutionary Game between Local Governments and Coal-Fired Power Plants," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(8), pages 1-18, April.
    22. Meng, Fanxin & Liu, Gengyuan & Liang, Sai & Su, Meirong & Yang, Zhifeng, 2019. "Critical review of the energy-water-carbon nexus in cities," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 1017-1032.
    23. Merabet, Nour Hane & Kerboua, Kaouther & Hoinkis, Jan, 2024. "Hydrogen production from wastewater: A comprehensive review of conventional and solar powered technologies," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 226(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natsus:v:1:y:2018:i:12:d:10.1038_s41893-018-0187-9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.