Research Progress on Microbial Fuel Cell Systems for Treating Antibiotic Wastewater

The widespread use of antibiotics in biomedical fields has led to their substantial residues in the environment, and the resulting bacterial resistance has become a global health threat. Conventional antibiotic wastewater treatment processes have limited capacity for antibiotic removal. As an emerging bio electrochemical technology, microbial fuel cells (MFCs) can degrade antibiotics while simultaneously recovering electrical energy, demonstrating broad prospects in the field of antibiotic wastewater treatment. This review comprehensively introduces and summarizes the degradation performance and electricity generation of MFCs toward different types of antibiotics, the treatment of antibiotic wastewater by various biological processes, and discusses the advantages and challenges of coupled MFC systems in synergistically enhancing degradation, reducing antibiotic resistance genes, and improving electricity generation performance. This paper aims to provide a reference for in-depth research and practical application of MFCs and their coupled technologies in antibiotic wastewater treatment.