Advancing carbon-neutral wastewater treatment: Artificial intelligence-driven strategies for emission mitigation and process optimization.
Journal:
Environmental research
Published Date:
Nov 28, 2025
Abstract
With the urgent global demand for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission mitigation, the wastewater treatment sector, which is responsible for 1-2 % of global carbon emissions, has become a critical focus for innovation. However, reducing GHG emission involves multi-objective collaborative optimization, including energy consumption optimization, chemical usage reduction, and enhanced recycling practices, which proves challenging to achieve through traditional manual methods. Recently, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven strategies, particularly machine learning (ML) and artificial neural networks (ANN), have emerged as an effective alternative to optimizing these processes. Herein, this review systematically analyzes the applications of AI for carbon emission reduction in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), highlighting advances in predictive analytics, process optimization, and resource recovery. It was demonstrated that AI has operational efficacy in GHG flux forecasting, adaptive aeration control, chemical dosing optimization, and renewable energy sources integration. However, the widespread implementation of AI in wastewater treatment still faces significant challenges, including data heterogeneity, model generalizability limitations across different plant configurations, and difficulties in integrating with existing infrastructure. Furthermore, we propose a strategic roadmap for developing hybrid physics-informed AI models, explainable decision-support systems, and platforms. This review underscores the transformative potential of AI in advancing sustainable wastewater treatment and outlines research priorities to overcome barriers to full-scale adoption.
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