V. natriegens. a, Schematic of chemical production by refinery of fossil fuels, sugar fermentation and biohybrids using wastewater. b, Comprehensive evaluation of sustainability of these routes by CO2 equivalent of GHG emissions, economy of cost advantages and revenue from extended by-products and environmental remediation. c, The industrial wastewater usually contains multipollutants including Cd2+, sulfate and organics. These pollutants could be co-utilized by engineered V. natriegens to construct a biohybrid system for solar-driven chemical production in-situ. Credit: Nature Sustainability (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-023-01233-2″> Schematic of solar-driven chemical production by semiconductor biohybrids synthesized from wastewater pollutants using engineered V. natriegens. a, Schematic of chemical production by refinery of fossil fuels, sugar fermentation and biohybrids using wastewater. b, Comprehensive evaluation of sustainability of these routes by CO2 equivalent of GHG emissions, economy of cost advantages and revenue from extended by-products and environmental remediation. c, The industrial wastewater usually contains multipollutants including Cd2+, sulfate and organics. These pollutants could be co-utilized by engineered V. natriegens to construct a biohybrid system for solar-driven chemical production in-situ. Credit: Nature Sustainability (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41893-023-01233-2
Researchers led by Prof. Gao Xiang from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Lu Lu from the Harbin Institute of Technology have proposed a novel method to transform wastewater contaminants into valuable chemicals using sunlight, thus paving the way for sustainable and eco-friendly chemical manufacturing.
The study was published in Nature Sustainability.