Evaluating advancements and opportunities in electro-assisted biodehalogenation of emerging halogenated contaminants

Electro-assisted biodehalogenation (EASB) as a biostimulation strategy can accelerate the slow attenuation of emerging halogenated contaminants (EHCs) in anaerobic aqueous environments. A timely review is urgent to evaluate the knowledge gaps and potential opportunities, further facilitating its design and application. Till now, EASB achieves promising progress in accelerating biohalogenation rates, promoting the detoxification of EHCs to cope with unfavourable environments and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. However, EASB of EHCs still faces several knowledge gaps. Exploring crucial microbes and deciphering insights into dehalogenase characteristics and extracellular electron transfer (EET) pathways remain the prominent task for EASB of EHCs. Moreover, microbial ecological relationships and intricate environmental factors affecting performances and applications are largely underexplored. The emergence of emerging tools holds promises for sorting the intricate changes and addressing these knowledge gaps. Judicious use of emerging tools will rejuvenate EASB strategy, from EET to scale-up, to purposefully and effectively address cascading EHCs.