Update of the challenges and opportunities on the treatment, beneficiation and valorisation of municipal wastewater

The discharge of municipal wastewater to different compartments of the receiving environment has been an issue of global concern. This is grossly linked to the level of contaminants that are available in municipal wastewater. This wastewater stream is a highly mineralized and complex effluent matrices that comprise elevated levels of chemical and biological constituents, and it creates devastating effects into receiving environments if not treated to the required standard. Due to its derivative nature, municipal wastewater is rich in organics, inorganic and microbial fractions. The complexity of municipal wastewater presents a noble avenue for the recovery of valuable minerals for their valorisation and beneficiations especially when viewed under the circular economy, re-use, recycle, and reduce paradigms. Herein, the state-of-the-art on the constituents of municipal wastewater, abatement, treatment, beneficiations, and valorisation is explicitly distilled and critically reviewed. The main quest will be to explicitly understand the chemical composition of municipal wastewater and then devise means in which this effluent stream could be beneficiated. An overview of the body of knowledge will be given with the emphasis placed on the beneficiation and valorisation of municipal wastewater under the well-known concept of circular economy (CE). This status quo update will grossly evaluate the existing body of knowledge on the treatment of municipal wastewater with specific emphasis on pragmatism of minerals harvesting, valorisation, and beneficiation along with future perspectives, avenues and research outlooks. Valorisation and beneficiation appear to be the most promising facet of intervention, since the reclaimed water and recovered minerals could offset relative operational costs, capital costs, and potentially associated environmental impacts, although more research and development is required in this direction.