摘要：Graphical abstractDisplay OmittedHighlights•MDCs are being developed for simultaneous wastewater treatment and desalination.•Desalination requires co-location of wastewater with saline water.•Recovery of ionic resources from wastewater can be an application niche for MDCs.•Those resources include ammonium, phosphate, and volatile fatty acids.•MDC-based resource recovery requires lower energy input with further waste treatment.AbstractMicrobial desalination cells (MDCs) have been studied as an emerging technology to accomplish simultaneous wastewater treatment and saline water desalination. A good amount of effort has been invested to understand fundamental problems and develop functional systems of the MDC technology. However, a revisit of MDCs’ desalination function reveals that the unique requirements like co-location of wastewater and saline water will greatly limit the application of this technology. In addition, the relatively low desalination rate of MDCs will result in a large reactor size and thus higher capital cost. Because of the need for wastewater (as a substrate for electricity generation), the MDC technology may have a promising niche of application for resource recovery from wastewater. A proper design of MDCs will allow the current-driven separation of ammonia, phosphorus, and volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from wastewater for further recovery. Based on the literature data, we conduct a case study analysis of mass flow for MDC-based resource recovery and demonstrate the potential of this function. Resource recovery can be a new function of interest to MDCs and worth further exploration of its technical and economic feasibility.
