Sustainable Wastewater Treatment and Reuse: Emerging Pollutants Behaviour and Removal

Dear Colleagues,

Water scarcity and pollution are not isolated issues but global challenges affecting many countries, particularly those with limited water resources. In response, growing interest has been in developing and enhancing wastewater treatment technologies to meet safety discharge limits, especially for reuse. As a result, water reuse now makes an important contribution to water supply, and a range of technologies are used in different parts of the world.

Adequate wastewater treatment systems are essential, and the use of unconventional water resources appears to be a necessary option to alleviate freshwater scarcity. The reuse of treated wastewater has been increasingly used for a number of applications, including agricultural, industrial, urban, and direct drinking water purposes.

Modern society depends on a wide range of chemicals, and these may ultimately enter urban wastewater. Emerging pollutants have been used extensively, and a wide range of them have been detected in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) effluents, surface and groundwater with concentrations ranging from a few ng/L to several g/L.

Emerging pollutants are chemicals that are not commonly monitored but have the potential to enter the environment and cause adverse ecological and human health effects. Over the last few years, the occurrence of emerging pollutants in treated wastewater has been identified as a significant environmental and health concern. Due to the characteristics of these compounds, their removal by conventional wastewater treatment technologies, including wastewater reclamation technologies, is often incomplete. It is well accepted that conventional WWTPs are not designed to remove emerging pollutants quantitatively, and their effluents constitute an important pathway for micropollutants entering water bodies.

Even though wastewater treatment and reuse technologies are a well-established field, many challenges remain to reach a stage of real, sustainable wastewater treatment that would protect the environment and human health.

This issue aims to share quality research on safe and sustainable wastewater treatment and reuse, considering emerging pollutants, as well as the great challenges the sector faces if it wants to be environmentally, economically and socially sustainable.

Important challenges for the field of wastewater treatment and reuse that could contribute to the scope of the current Special Issue include (but are not limited to): (a) new developments in wastewater treatment and reuse, (b) appropriate technologies for different emerging pollutants removal, (c) behaviour, removal and fate of emerging pollutants during water treatment processes, (d) integrated approaches to reduce different pollutants, (e) water reuse for agricultural irrigation and emerging pollutants (cases of study, soil and bioaccumulation, etc.), (f) safe wastewater reclamation and reuse, (g) wastewater treatment and emerging pollutants in developing countries and (h) new developments in respective policy and regulations.

The Special Issue welcomes original research and review papers focused on the latest knowledge and innovations in the field of Wastewater Treatment Processes for Sustainable Water Reuse, with a special focus on emerging pollutants. The manuscripts must show originality and address knowledge gaps related to the scope of the Special Issue.

Dr. Daniel M. González-Pérez
Guest Editor

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.

• wastewater treatments

• wastewater reclamation and reuse
• emerging pollutants
• reuse water and emerging pollutants
• personal care and pharmaceutical products
• pesticides
• microplastics
• water reuse for agricultural irrigation and emerging pollutants
• wastewater treatment in developing countries
• regulations & policy