Microbial and Performance Dynamics in Resource Recovery from Waste and Wastewater

Resource recovery systems, traditionally associated with wastewater treatment plants, are undergoing a transformation in response to global challenges such as resource scarcity, climate change, and the drive toward circular economies. Increasingly, waste streams including municipal wastewater, organic solid waste, and industrial residues are being viewed as valuable sources of energy, nutrients, and other materials. This shift has opened new avenues for integrating treatment and recovery systems into biorefinery platforms focused on waste valorization.

At the center of these biological systems are complex microbial communities whose structure, functions, and dynamics critically influence process performance. Understanding and managing such microbial and operational dynamics is essential for achieving consistent, scalable, and efficient recovery solutions.

While laboratory-scale studies have demonstrated the potential of microbial-driven resource recovery systems, translating these findings into full-scale or real-world applications often reveals significant shifts in performance. Such discrepancies highlight major gaps in our understanding of biological processes under variable and less controlled conditions. These challenges result in underperforming systems that fall short of recovery or valorization targets, despite promising early-stage results.

This Research Topic aims to address these challenges by creating a platform for sharing both successful and unsuccessful experiences in microbial resource recovery bioprocesses. Learning from failure is essential in biological process development, particularly in systems governed by nonlinear and emergent microbial interactions. We seek to advance understanding of microbial dynamics, uncover failure mechanisms, and promote strategies for improved process resilience and optimization. Moreover, highlighting advances in data analytics, machine learning, and systems biology will be central to achieving these goals and ultimately developing climate-resilient, carbon-, and energy-neutral wastewater treatment solutions.

This Research Topic welcomes contributions that explore microbial and performance dynamics in biological resource recovery and waste valorization systems. Submissions may include Original Research, Reviews, Methods, and negative results with scientific merit. We are particularly interested in studies that address:
• Experimental investigations of microbial community function and dynamics in bioreactors;
• Mechanistic insights into process failure, instability and suboptimal outcomes;
• Process optimization using data-driven and AI/ML approaches;
• Integration of environmental biotechnology with computational modeling and optimization.

Please note that Microbiotechnology does not consider descriptive studies that are solely based on amplicon (e.g., 16S rRNA) profiles or comparisons of nucleic acid extracts (e.g., metagenomics), unless they are accompanied by a clear hypothesis and experimentation and provide insight into the microbiological system or process being studied.

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: Microbial resource recovery, Wastewater biorefineries, Biological waste treatment, Process optimization, AI in wastewater treatment, Machine learning in resource recovery, Microbial wastewater treatment, Sustainable wastewater management

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.