Abstract Lab-scale wastewater treatment studies, including urine recovery, often rely on oversimplified synthetic wastewater, thereby compromising the reliability of results and data. Here, we systematically evaluate how using full-component versus simplified synthetic urine formulations affects the performance and engineering-economic assessment of bipolar membrane electrodialysis. Our findings reveal that simplification fundamentally alters fouling mechanisms. While urea alone causes significant damage to anion exchange membranes through hydrogen bonding aggregation, natural organic co-components in real urine mitigate fouling via inhibitory interactions—a mechanism confirmed by molecular dynamics simulations and experimental characterization. After seven batches, the full-component formulations showed 29.3% less performance decay and 10–14% higher urea recovery than the simplified formulation. Moreover, the complete removal of organic components disrupts ion-organic co-aggregation pathways on cation exchange membranes, shifting fouling toward mineral crystallization on bipolar membranes. Simplification also distorts the engineering-economic assessment, overestimating cleaning costs by 15.9% and underestimating membrane lifespan by 12.5%. These findings necessitate identifying key wastewater constituents and ensuring experimental integrity to bridge lab-industry gaps, advocating designs comprehensively addressing multi-component interactions.
Yang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.