The application of co-metabolism in refractory wastewater treatment

Co-metabolism as an effective wastewater treatment practice which has been attracted much attention from domestic and foreign scholars. This review provides a summary of the mechanism of co-metabolism and the application in paper-making wastewater, coking wastewater, pharmaceutical wastewater and other refractory wastewater. Moreover, this paper proposed the limitation in current co-metabolism research and suggested that utilizing the genomics, proteomics, and metabolic analysis to study, particularly in designing more efficient bioreactor and technology, and the prospects of development in future are also discussed.