Phosphorus, as an essential element in life organism, plays an important role in life activities. Recently, with the increasingly stringent discharge standards of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), ferric salts have been widely used in WWTPs as chemical agents for phosphorus removal. Although a large number of studies have been carried out, dueto the diversity and complexity of the sewage system, the efficiency of chemical-assisted biological phosphorus removal and side-stream phosphorus recovery is still facing many challenges. Therefore, this article reviews the basic characteristics of the ferric salt dependent phosphorus removal process, sorts out the interaction mechanism between ferric salt and phosphorus.The influence and trend of iron salt on microbial community structure in the two processes are summarized, and the research direction of the process in the future is prospected.It is found that continuing to systematically study the symbiotic relationship between microorganisms and different phosphorus minerals, optimizing the separation and purification conditions of downstream products of side stream phosphorus recovery, and establishing a dynamic model to reasonably predict and feed back the concentration of iron and phosphorus in the sewage treatment system are inevitable measures to improve the resource recovery efficiency of the sewage treatment plant and promote sustainable development.