Energy Production and Storage in Bioelectrochemical Systems

生物电化学系统（BES）大约在15年前才被引入。尽管如此，这些系统已经吸引了科学和工程界的相当大的关注，如指数增长的出版物数量和几次扩大规模的尝试所证明的。废水处理是最早提出的BES应用之一，并且仍然是全球研究工作的焦点，因为该技术完全适合可再生能源生产的未来场景。在理解BES的微生物学和改进的电极材料方面的进展导致了数量级的性能提高。然而，基于BES的废水处理系统的资本和运营成本仍然很高，因此需要进一步研究改进工艺设计和控制。

Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) were introduced only about 15 years ago. Nevertheless, these systems have attracted considerable attention of the scientific and engineering communities as demonstrated by an exponentially growing number of publications and several scale-up attempts. Wastewater treatment was one of the first proposed BES applications and it remains at the focus of research efforts worldwide, as this technology perfectly fits future scenarios of renewable energy production. Advances in understanding the microbiology of BESs and improved electrode materials have led to orders-of-magnitude performance increase. Yet, both capital and operating costs of BES-based wastewater treatment systems remain high, thus requiring further research in improved process design and control.