High-concentration dissolved oxygen delivery in wastewater treatment: barriers between innovation and adoption

High-concentration dissolved oxygen (DO) delivery technologies have shown significant promise in enhancing wastewater treatment performance, improving nutrient removal, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. These systems remain largely absent from full-scale implementation despite strong technical results. This perspectives paper examines the systemic barriers that have slowed adoption of high-DO systems, including regulatory risk, lack of real-world performance data, and limited infrastructure tracking. It identifies critical research and policy gaps, such as the absence of national adoption data, standardized pilot protocols, and innovation-enabling permitting frameworks, and outlines a path forward through regulatory reform, targeted research, and institutional collaboration. The wastewater sector can move high-DO technologies from niche experimentation to mainstream practice by addressing these innovation bottlenecks to support more resilient, efficient, and environmentally aligned treatment systems.