Novel Insights on Wastewater Treatment Processes for Sustainable Removal of Emerging Contaminants

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Wastewater Treatment and Reuse".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 5 July 2024 | Viewed by 3004

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
REQUIMTE/LAQV, Instituto Superior de Engenharia Do Porto, Politécnico Do Porto, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida 431, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Interests: wastewater treatment; sustainable treatment processes; tertiary treatments biosorption; advanced oxidation processes; biowastes valorization (sorbent and biofilm prodution); response surface methodology
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Guest Editor
1. Department of Applied Physics and Chemistry, University of León, Campus de Vegazana, 24071 León, Spain
2. Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM), University of Aveiro, Campus de Santiago, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
Interests: pollution and contamination of water, soil and sediments; decontamination and purification of water: global treatment systems; sustainable treatment processes; clean and alternative technologies; biowastes management and valorization; novel materials: production, characterization and utilization; thermal analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
REQUIMTE/LAQV, Instituto Superior de Engenharia Do Porto, Politécnico Do Porto, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida 431, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal
Interests: environmental engineering; characterization of samples (water, wastewater, surface water, soil, sludge, solid wastes); water and wastewater treatment, valorization of biowastes; adsorption; electrochemical processes; ecotoxicity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Protecting Nature is of the utmost importance to prevent further loss of biodiversity. Conservation and restoration activities are urgently needed to protect the biodiversity of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. Emerging contaminants are among the current threats to ecosystems and human health. Major sources of this sort of pollution are the discharges from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) because the existing treatment processes do not efficiently remove emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and microplastics.

In this context, research on the characterization and evaluation of hazards, and on the development of efficient technologies for the elimination of emerging contaminants from wastewater, is essential. The development of economical and sustainable technologies is needed to promote the safe use and reuse of water. In this sense, ecotoxicity tests are a meaningful risk assessment tool to evaluate the toxicity effects of WWTP effluents and guarantee their safe discharge in the environment. Finally, methodologies such as life cycle analysis and life cycle cost analysis are very useful to assess and quantify the environmental and economic/financial viability of water management strategies.

In this Special Issue (SI), we would like to invite researchers working on emerging contaminants to share cutting-edge advances in wastewater treatments that may contribute to the sustainability and safety of wastewater treatment and reuse, and to present developing methodologies to assess ecosystem conservation and restoration. The listed keywords illustrate just a few of the many possibilities.

Dr. Olga Matos de Freitas
Prof. Dr. Marta Otero
Dr. Sónia Figueiredo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • emerging contaminants
  • wastewater characterization
  • wastewater reuse
  • circular economy
  • sustainable strategies
  • advanced wastewater treatment
  • ecotoxicity
  • life cycle assessment

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 14987 KiB  
Article
Enhanced Photocatalytic Degradation of Tetracycline by Magnetically Separable g-C3N4-Doped Magnetite@Titanium Dioxide Heterostructured Photocatalyst
by Rong Liu, Mingming Li, Jie Chen, Yu Yin, Wei Zhao, Zhanghao Gong, Hua Jin and Zhigang Liu
Water 2024, 16(10), 1372; https://doi.org/10.3390/w16101372 - 11 May 2024
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Abstract
Residual drug pollutants in water environments represent a severe risk to human health, so developing a cheap, environmentally friendly, and effective photocatalyst to deal with them has become a hot topic. Herein, a magnetically separable Fe3O4@TiO2/g-C3 [...] Read more.
Residual drug pollutants in water environments represent a severe risk to human health, so developing a cheap, environmentally friendly, and effective photocatalyst to deal with them has become a hot topic. Herein, a magnetically separable Fe3O4@TiO2/g-C3N4 photocatalyst with a special heterojunction structure was fabricated, and its photocatalytic performance was assessed by degrading tetracycline (TC). Compared to Fe3O4@TiO2, the synthesized Fe3O4@TiO2/g-C3N4 exhibited superior TC degradation performance, which was primarily ascribed to the heterojunction formed between TiO2 and g-C3N4 and its ability to enhance the visible light absorption capacity and reduce the photoinduced electron/hole recombination rate. Moreover, a free radical capture experiment further confirmed that ·O2 and h+ are the predominant components in the TC degradation reaction. Under UV–Vis irradiation, the TC degradation rate escalated to as high as 98% within 120 min. Moreover, Fe3O4@TiO2/g-C3N4 was demonstrated to be easily recovered by magnetic separation without any notable loss even after five cycles, showing exceptional stability and reusability. These findings indicate that Fe3O4@TiO2/g-C3N4 is a promising photocatalyst for environmental remediation that may provide a sustainable approach to degrading antibiotic pollutants in wastewater. Full article
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15 pages, 4227 KiB  
Article
Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Dyes from Clinical Laboratory Wastewater
by J. H. Ramírez Franco, S. D. Castañeda Cárdenas and H. R. Zea Ramírez
Water 2023, 15(6), 1238; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15061238 - 22 Mar 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1820
Abstract
Clinical laboratory wastewaters are of important environmental concern due to the highly complex chemical reagents and dyes used to identify various pathologies, which are difficult to degrade by conventional treatment methods. The present research aimed to assess the effects of ilmenite use in [...] Read more.
Clinical laboratory wastewaters are of important environmental concern due to the highly complex chemical reagents and dyes used to identify various pathologies, which are difficult to degrade by conventional treatment methods. The present research aimed to assess the effects of ilmenite use in the discoloration process of clinical laboratory wastewater. The wastewater originates from a Gram staining process used to identify pathogenic microorganisms present in biological samples. The active ingredient is crystal violet, a triphenylmethane dye derivative, highly toxic and non-biodegradable that causes a shiny purple color in the wastewater. The ilmenite was characterized by X-ray Fluorescence, X-ray Diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy and Nitrogen adsorption isotherm, while the discoloration process of the wastewater was measured by UV–Vis spectrophotometry and pH change trough the reaction time, evaluating different ilmenite loads, particle size and stability under light sources with different energies. Chemical oxygen demand analysis confirmed that acid formation and discoloration were associated with organic substance mineralization. Type C ultraviolet light and 0.7 g/L load were identified as the best operating conditions for the discoloration process. It was possible to establish that ilmenite is stable after four uses in the discoloration process, obtaining, in all cases, discoloration percentages higher than 90% after 3 h of irradiation. Full article
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