Expanding a circular economy of aquaculture tailwater: Advanced treatment, water reuse, and ecotoxicity assessment

Aquaculture is essential in solving global food scarcity and contributes significantly to global economic growth. With the rapid expansion of high-yield and high-density breeding, the aquaculture industry produces vast amounts of tailwater containing rich nutrients and harmful substances. If not properly disposed of, it would deteriorate the body of receiving it and provoke potential human health risks. Current aquaculture tailwater treatment practices suffer high costs, low efficacy, and poor stability. More importantly, it underrates the ecological risk derived from the abuse of antibiotics and the propagation of antibiotic resistance genes. These aspects seriously hinder the sustainable development of aquaculture industries. This project intends to develop an innovative biological-chemical-electrochemical (BCE) process to remove organics, nitrients and antibiotics while improving water recycling efficacy. This approach involves a cost-saving anaerobic-oxic process for removing organics and nitrogen, an optimized add-on chemical process to remove phosphate, and a novel electrochemical process for advanced removal of antibiotics and regeneration of reusable water. The outcomes of this project will undoubtedly underpin prosperous and sustainable aquaculture industries in China and beyond.