Novel Bioconversion Technology of Waste and Wastewater for Resource Recovery

With the global energy crisis and shortage of fossil fuels, developing alternative energy sources is an ideal approach. Approximately 2.01 billion tons of solid waste are generated globally each year, with an expected increase of 70% by 2050. Meanwhile, industrial and agricultural industries also discharge a large amount of wastewater containing organic matter annually. Conventional waste management not only contributes to greenhouse gas emissions but also fails to recover valuable resources embedded in waste streams. Similarly, traditional wastewater treatment prioritizes pollutant removal over resource recovery, resulting in lost opportunities for circular economy integration. Bioconversion technology can convert waste and wastewater into high-value products using efficient microorganisms, enzymes, or mixed systems, thereby achieving resource recovery.

This Research Topic aims to develop novel and efficient bioconversion technologies for waste or wastewater for resource recovery, with a special focus on novel microbial technology and its role in advancing green biomanufacturing of industrial microorganisms or enzymes. With the rapid development of bioinformatics analysis, multi-omics datasets, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, this Research Topic accelerates the breakthrough of bioconversion technology for organic waste and wastewater, thereby realizing the industrial application of efficient microorganisms or enzymes to produce high value-added products such as biofuels, bioplastics, and other bio-based products. For multi-omic research, manuscripts must be hypothesis-driven and comprise experimental validation.

In this Research Topic, Original Research, Methods and Reviews are welcome. To further explore the core themes of this Research Topic, we welcome submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following areas:
1. Developing efficient microorganisms and enzymes for biodegradation or bioconversion of organic waste or wastewater.
2. Investigating the characteristics, diversity, and function of microorganisms in the microbial ecosystem for efficient conversion of waste or wastewater.
3. Efficient microbial bioconversion of organic waste or wastewater to produce high value-added products.
4. Bioconversion of biomass waste and organics in wastewater into biofuels, bioplastics, and other bio-based products.
5. Exploration of anaerobic digestion, fermentation, photo-fermentation, and enzyme-assisted processes for efficient waste-to-resource conversion.
6. Novel pretreatment, bioaugmentation, synthetic biology tools, artificial intelligence and developing novel methods for bioconversion of waste and wastewater to resource recovery.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Biorefineries, bioconversion, biomass waste, wastewater, anaerobic digestion, microalgae, photosynthetic bacteria, resource recovery

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.