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Sustainable Solutions for Wastewater Treatment Management—Microbial Ecology and Biotechnological Applications in the Context of Circular Economy

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Waste and Recycling".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2025 | Viewed by 396

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Engineering, Democritus University of Thrace, 67100 Xanthi, Greece
Interests: wastewater treatment; microbial ecology; sludge biodiversity and ecology; bio-indicators; environmental sustainability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR), University of Porto, 4099-002 Porto, Portugal
Interests: water resources; water engineering; bioremediation; water and wastewater treatment; environmental biotechnology; phytotechnology; phytoremediation; constructed wetlands; sustainability education; nature-based solutions
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Technical University of Crete, 73100 Chania, Greece
Interests: wastewater treatment processes; water reclamation and reuse; removal/valorization of nitrogen from wastewater using encapsulated microorganisms; effect of heavy metals on the behaviour of microorganisms; municipal solid waste and biosolids management; with emphasis on energy production; integrated water resources management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The rising demands of the expanding human population have led to an increased use of water resources for household, agricultural, and industrial needs, which leads to an increased wastewater production.

All around the world the annual production of sludge reaches 45 million tons of dry matter, while in the European Union the respective production varies between 10 and 13 million tons dry matter, related to the almost 55 billion cubic meters of wastewater produced on the European continent and the 360 billion cubic meters produced worldwide. These numbers are alarming regarding the urgent need to protect the environment, through the application of conventional and newly developed treatment systems and methods, but also highlight the vast biotechnological potential related to the presence of both nutrients and microorganisms of outstanding diversity. Only recently the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) reported that in year 2050 globally the waste production will further increase reaching an annual high of 3.4 billion tones. The European Green Deal and one of its main pillar the Circular Economy Action Plan has introduced a whole new approach, which extends to the pressing need for the implementation of sustainable water, waste and wastewater treatment solutions to ensure that resources are retained in the system and treated as sources of recovered materials, components, enzymes and renewable energy.

The effective treatment of the produced wastewater and the reduction of water scarcity are closely linked to the effectiveness of the applied treatment methods (ideally sustainable nature-based) and the possibility of reusing the discharged water when necessary. Additionally, the presence of bioactive substances in various types of wastewater and the enzymatic activity of certain microbial species offer a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution for the degradation of pollutants. This itself contains a growing interest and a broad research field towards the exploration and exploitation of the diverse biotechnological applications of specific groups of microorganisms. It also provides the possibility of treating the effluents of treatment systems as materials that are not discharged in the environment as waste, but instead are further used in a variety of applications, for example in agriculture.

For this Special Issue of Sustainability—Sustainable Solutions for Wastewater Treatment Management—Microbial Ecology and Biotechnological Applications in the Context of Circular Economy—we welcome manuscripts focusing on

  • sustainable wastewater treatment
  • microbial ecology of activated sludge
  • simulation and management of water (numerical and data-driven)
  • wastewater and coastal systems
  • removal of micropollutants
  • sludge treatment
  • WWTP efficiency assessment
  • health status monitoring and modeling of the receiving water bodies
  • wastewater reuse practices and legislation
  • biotechnological applications in pollutants removal

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Nikolaos Remmas
Prof. Dr. Cristina Sousa Coutinho Calheiros
Prof. Dr. Petros Gikas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • wastewater management
  • bioremediation
  • microbial ecology
  • constructed wetlands
  • water & wastewater treatment
  • circular economy

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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