Algae and Aquatic Plants: Energy from the Wastewater

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Today’s modernization has made unlimited advancements for industrial development and upgradation of livelihood which have also raised energy consumption in all its forms. Fossil gaseous, liquid, and solid fuels like natural gas, petroleum, and coal respectively, are the main forms of energy used for commercial as well as household purposes. Overconsumption of fuels and resources at global level has invited climate change and climate crisis due to unbalanced modernization, burning of fossil fuels and deforestation ( Abdel-Raouf et al. 2012 ). These challenges need urgent actions not only to lower the release of CO 2 and other greenhouse gases but also to satisfy the rising need of society for fuels by energy switching. The reliance on petroleum and fossil fuels is also one of the major obstacles in front of energy/fuel switching. However, scientific interventions allow the use of varied biomass as feedstock for the production of sustainable and carbon neutral or low emitter energy forms. Initially biofuels were produced from edible crops or foodbased sources (first-generation biofuels) which raised the price of food grains and lowered the availability and hence did not seem reasonable in the long term. In second generation, the dimension shifted to lignocellulosic biomass which invited deforestation besides being costly and tedious. Both generations became non-scalable or non-sustainable in terms of economics or ecologically ( Al-Jabri et al. 2021 ). On the other hand, increased industrialization, and urbanization also increased water consumption and released huge amount of wastewater, enriched with nutrient, minerals and organic pollutants ( Ahuja et al. 2024 ). The exact composition of wastewater depends upon the source. In the environment, the discharge off wastewater has raised alarm due to evolution of drug-resistant pathogens. Thus reclamation and reuse of wastewater become an essential tactic to alleviate water shortage, as evidenced by the growing demand for freshwater and the depletion of conventional water sources along with lowering the economic loss associated with heath and waste resources ( Bashir et al. 2020 , Bhatia et al. 2022a , b).

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