Editorial Board Members' Collection Series: Water Resources—2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

The second edition of this Special Issue will address the key challenges related to circular economy (CE) approaches to water and wastewater management. Resource scarcity is the most important driver behind CE. Fresh and clean water scarcity, increasing water consumption, and climate change will cause a global water crisis in the coming years. Furthermore, in CE frameworks, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) must become “ecologically sustainable” technological systems, which means more efficient, less energy-demanding, and capable of supporting resource and energy recovery. At the same time, WWTPs must maintain their fundamental role to provide constant and adequate water pollution control so as to protect human health and environmental quality against conventional and emerging contaminants, including microplastics and other plastic-derived pollutants.

This Special Issue will focus on the management of water and wastewater from a CE perspective, particularly the optimization of water consumption and resource and/or energy recovery from wastewater and sewage sludge. We encourage contributions that refer to the following topics:

• Strategies for water saving in agriculture, industry, and household activities;
• Resource recovery and biorefinery approaches aimed at extracting value-added products (including, but not limited to, cellulose, enzymes, bioplastics, biopesticides, proteins, biochar) and nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, micronutrients) from wastewater and sewage sludge;
• Energy-saving systems in WWTPs (including, but not limited to, systems used in aeration processes) and energy recovery routes, such as anaerobic digestion (including pre- and intermediate treatments), incineration, pyrolysis, gasification, hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), enhanced digestion using microbial fuel cells, and hydrogen production;
• Digitalization and AI for circular water systems, including smart monitoring (IoT/SCADA), machine learning and data-driven optimization, digital twins, advanced process control, anomaly detection and predictive maintenance, and decision-support tools for water reuse and resource/energy recovery;
• Holistic approaches (including, e.g., LCA/TEA, risk and reliability assessment) and real-world case studies are particularly encouraged.

We welcome original research articles, critical reviews, and practice-oriented case studies across all application scales.

Dr. Barbara Ruffino
Dr. Katarzyna Pietrucha-Urbanik
Dr. Giuseppe Campo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Resources is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

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• clean water and sanitation
• wastewater treatment
• water reuse
• resource recovery
• water-to-energy nexus
• energy saving
• energy recovery
• circular economy
• machine learning (AI)
• digital twins

• Editorial Board Members' Collection Series: Water Resources in Resources (9 articles)