Nitrate is one of the most common pollutants in the water environment. A key factor for the effective control and removal of nitrate is the ability to accurately determine the nitrate concentration in groundwater and the secondary effluent of wastewater treatment plants. Here, a bioelectrochemical method for real-time detection of the nitrate was developed. In this work, a kinetic model was developed to describe the correlation between the nitrate concentration and the current. Standard addition experiments showed the relative error between indicator predictions and ion chromatographic values ranged from 3.14% to 9.74%. The monitoring results of secondary effluent showed that the system could give a good response at different nitrate concentrations. The average error of not >10.85% between the indicator predictions and ion chromatographic values was demonstrated. This study offers a new method for the development of sustainable bioelectrochemical system (BES)-based technology for the real-time detection of nitrate in groundwater and the secondary effluent.

硝酸盐是水环境中最常见的污染物之一。有效控制和去除硝酸盐的关键因素是能够准确确定地下水和废水处理厂二次废水中硝酸盐的浓度。在这里，开发了一种用于实时检测硝酸盐的生物电化学方法。在这项工作中，建立了动力学模型来描述硝酸盐浓度和电流之间的相关性。标准添加实验表明，指示剂预测值与离子色谱值之间的相对误差为3.14％至9.74％。二级废水的监测结果表明，该系统在不同的硝酸盐浓度下都能给出良好的响应。平均误差不大于10。指示剂预测值与离子色谱值之间的关系被证明是85％。这项研究为开发基于可持续生物电化学系统（BES）的技术提供了一种新方法，该技术可用于实时检测地下水和次要废水中的硝酸盐。