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Updated: Aug 29, 2025

Electrochemically and Bioelectrochemically Induced Ammonium Recovery
Published on: January 22, 2015
Ammonia/ammonium removal/recovery from wastewaters using bioelectrochemical systems (BES): A review
Yu-Jen Lee1, Bin-Le Lin1, Mianqiang Xue1
1Research Institute of Science for Safety and Sustainability, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, 16-1 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8569, Japan.
Abstract:
This review updates the current research efforts on using BES to recover NH3/NH4+, highlighting the novel configurations and introducing the working principles and the applications of microbial fuel cell (MFC), microbial electrolysis cell (MEC), microbial desalination cell (MDC), and microbial electrosynthesis cell (MESC) for NH3/NH4+ removal/recovery. However, commonly studied BES processes for NH3/NH4+ removal/recovery are energy intensive with external aeration needed for NH3 stripping being the largest energy input. In such a process bipolar membranes used for yielding a local alkaline pool recovering NH3 is not cost-effective. This gives a chance to microbial electrosynthesis which turned out to be a potential alternative option to approach circular bioeconomy. Furtherly, the reactor volume and NH3/NH4+ removal/recovery efficiency has a weakly positive correlation, indicating that there might be other factors controlling the reactor performance that are yet to be investigated.
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