Towards resource recovery from industrial wastewater treatment by tubing two-phase partitioning bioreactors: challenges and perspectives

Raw materials are becoming increasingly scarce; therefore the development of new technologies aimed to recover energy and resource from wastewater is becoming more and more attractive. To this aim, we propose an innovative two-phase partitioning bioreactor (TPPB) equipped with polymeric tubing for the biological treatment of industrial wastewater to recovery valuable products such as metals and/or salts. The tubing is permeable to the organic pollutants which pass through the tubing walls into the bioreactor bulk phase for their biodegradation, and simultaneously able to separate the wastewater flowing inside tubing from the biomass. This feature practically eliminate the toxicity effects and allows the recovery of valuable products from the wastewater. We tested the tubing TPPB for the biological treatment of tannery and saline wastewater achieving practically complete removal of organics and full recovery of metals and salt, respectively.