China Nonferrous Metallurgy

Nonferrous metallurgy wastewater contains a large amount of heavy metals, non-degradable organic matter, and NH+4-N. Biological treatment technologies have garnered widespread attention due to their low cost and sustainability. This review elucidates the performance characteristics of different types of biological technologies based on bibliometric analysis and looks forward to its future development. The bibliometric analysis confirms that the use of biological technologies for treating wastewater is a mainstream technique for the future; however, there is still a lack of in-depth mechanism research. The domesticated membrane bio-reactor focuses on removing nitrogen and organic matter from heavy metal wastewater, while biological filters and sequencing batch reactors are more suitable for simultaneously removing various pollutants. Process improvements and coupling can effectively address wastewater containing multiple heavy metals. The use of microbial agents is cleaner and more sustainable, capable of tackling high-concentration wastewater with coexisting heavy metals and achieving recovery of nonferrous through mineralization. However, measures need to be taken to fix the agents during application, examining the competitive and synergistic relationships between strains to identify optimal parameters. Microbial electrochemical technology, plant-microbe coupling technology, and microbial-algal symbiotic technology are newly developed wastewater treatment technologies in recent years. These three can be coupled to form an efficient integrated wastewater treatment system. In the future, constructing a multi-technology integration system and a circular economy technology system will be important areas of focus.