Integrated bioelectrochemical platforms

Energy and water are intrinsically linked, as all energy sources need water for their production processes, and at the same time, water resources require energy to be available for human consumption. One of the promising technologies that is concerned with dealing with water/energy challenges is bioelectrochemical systems (BESs), which use microbial cells to transform the chemical energy stowed in biodegradable organic materials to direct electric energy and chemicals. The generated current is utilized to develop several applications, e.g., power production (microbial fuel cells), water desalination (microbial desalination cells), hydrogen (microbial electrolysis cells) or chemicals synthesis (microbial electrosynthesis cells). However, these technologies are still in their early-stage of development and are confronted with several challenges. Integration with other technologies, e.g., capacitive deionization and membrane bioreactor, was proposed to overcome these challenges. This chapter provides a broad evaluation of all the recently developed BES integrated systems, with focus on their constructions and performances.