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Application of Microbial Processes-Centered Technologies towards Enhanced and Sustainable Wastewater...
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Application of Microbial Processes-Centered Technologies towards Enhanced and Sustainable Wastewater Treatment

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2022) | Viewed by 6047

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Jin Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Interests: wastewater treatment and resource recovery
Dr. Guangbin Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 21042, USA
Interests: nutrient removal/recovery, energy recovery from wastes, sustainable wastewater treatment, biodegradation of emerging contaminants; microbial toxicity; bioreactors; environmental chemistry
Dr. Peng Wei

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Water Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: anaerobic digestion; CFD and biochemical kinetics coupling; multiphase flows; sludge rheology; scaled-up optimization
Dr. Liyuan Hou

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Interests: plastic biodegradation; bioplastic production from wastewater; wastewater treatment and biological nutrient removal; biomass; emerging renewable energy issues

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

As a promising and sustainable technology, biological treatment has been successfully applied as a centerpiece in both centralized and decentralized wastewater treatment facilities to effectively remove impurity and problematic components for recharging water cycles on Earth. However, with rapid urbanization and industrialization, growth in population, energy crisis, and climate change, conventional biological wastewater treatment is facing critical challenges in terms of the enormous volumes of wastewater, energy (i.e., aeration) and resource (i.e., external carbon addition) consumption, and presence of complex synthetic chemicals at low/trace levels with risk potential. For the protection of the aquatic eco-system and public health, increasingly stringent wastewater discharge standards concerning nutrient loads as well as emerging contaminants (e.g., per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, pharmaceuticals, etc.) have been or are foreseen to be implemented in many countries across the world. Therefore, innovative and modified biological technologies and materials have been continuously studied with many exciting breakthroughs from both laboratory research and pilot/full scale implementation. The outcomes are expected to play a significant role in developing the next generation of biological wastewater treatment with energy-neutral/negative, resource recovery, and high sustainability.

Additionally, benefited from continuously monitoring and collection of data from unit processes, integration of data science with wastewater treatment offers researchers and engineers another powerful tool in their toolkit for achieving effective process control and system optimization. Recent advancement in data-driven process control and performance analysis, together with the emerging techniques in microbiology and microbiome-based machine learning, shows promising results to deepen our understanding of and enhance the efficiency of biological processes in wastewater treatment. However, precise control and prediction of the performance of biological processes remain challenging due to the fluctuation in influent quality, difficulty to effectively enrich/out-select certain microorganisms, complexity of the microbial communities, and unknown interactions among microorganism including those unidentified ones.

This Special Issue aims to present the latest findings/results, promising technologies, and valuable practical experience for enhancing the performance of the biological technologies and improving the system sustainability in wastewater treatment. We welcome original and high-quality research articles, short communications, as well as technical perspectives, mini-reviews, and full-length reviews.

Contributions may focus on, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • Biological nutrient removal/recovery in wastewater;
  • Biological energy recovery from wastewater;
  • Balancing and optimizing carbon management in wastewater via biological processes;
  • Innovative bio-materials (e.g., biocatalytic and biosorptive materials) used for enhancing biological processes in treating wastewater;
  • Emerging/modified biotechnologies for achieving sustainable wastewater treatment;
  • Fate, transformation, and degradation of emerging contaminants (e.g., PFAS and microplastic) associated with biological processes in wastewater treatment;
  • Identity, physiology, ecology and population dynamics of microorganisms in biological wastewater treatment;
  • Interaction (e.g., competition, synergistic effect, quorum sensing, etc.) between microorganisms and their impacts on the performance of biological wastewater treatment;
  • Application of data science, modeling, and other advanced analytics (e.g., data-driven processes control and performance analyses, machine learning, data mining, etc.) in advancing understanding of, predicting, and enhancing efficiency of biological processes in wastewater treatment;
  • Case studies on the implementation of sustainable biological technologies in wastewater for treatment and/or resource recovery that include a holistic costs/benefits analysis.

Prof. Dr. Jin Li
Dr. Guangbin Li
Dr. Peng Wei
Dr. Liyuan Hou
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

  • biological technologies
  • wastewater treatment
  • resource recovery
  • sustainability
  • emerging contaminants
  • biological materials
  • big data

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 3837 KiB  
Article
ZIF-67/SA@PVDF Ultrafiltration Membrane with Simultaneous Adsorption and Catalytic Oxidation for Dyes
by Kaixuan Zhu, Shabin Mohammed, Hai Tang, Zongli Xie, Sisheng Fang and Shasha Liu
Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 2879; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15042879 - 5 Feb 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2020
Abstract
Due to their stable chemical properties and complex structures, dyes are difficult to be removed from water. Herein, a ZIF-67/SA@PVDF (ZSA3@PVDF) mixed matrix membrane has been fabricated by incorporating silicon aerogel (SA) and zeolitic imidazolate framework material 67 (ZIF-67) nanoparticles in a polyvinylidene [...] Read more.
Due to their stable chemical properties and complex structures, dyes are difficult to be removed from water. Herein, a ZIF-67/SA@PVDF (ZSA3@PVDF) mixed matrix membrane has been fabricated by incorporating silicon aerogel (SA) and zeolitic imidazolate framework material 67 (ZIF-67) nanoparticles in a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) membrane for the removal and degradation of dyes from water. The influence of SA and ZIF-67 on the morphology and structure of the membrane was confirmed using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM). In ZSA3@PVDF membrane, both SA and ZIF-67 are highly porous nanomaterials that possess good adsorption capacity, as confirmed by the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) result. In addition, the cobalt (Co) element of ZIF-67 can catalyze peroxymonosulfate (PMS) to generate strong oxidizing sulfate radicals (SO42−), contributing to improving regeneration capacity of the ZIF-67/SA@PVDF membrane. The water flux of ZSA3@PVDF membrane is 427.6 L m−2 h−1 bar−1, and the Methylene blue (MB) removal rate is higher than 99% when filtrating 100 mL MB solution (5 mg/L). The regeneration test result shows that the removal rate of the ZSA3@PVDF membrane is still above 98% after five cycles of adsorption of MB. The self-cleaning experiment shows that the adsorption of SA in the ZSA3@PVDF membrane promotes the catalytic performance of the membrane, showing a better self-cleaning ability. The ZSA3@PVDF membrane provides a new strategy for the removal of dyes in the advanced purification of dye wastewater. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Microbial Processes-Centered Technologies towards Enhanced and Sustainable Wastewater Treatment)
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11 pages, 2328 KiB  
Article
Fermentation and Biogas Production of Alkaline Wasted Sludge Enhanced in a Bioelectrolysis-Assisted Anaerobic Digestion Reactor under Increasing Organic Loads
by Xu Kang, Yu Liu, Wenzong Liu, Ling Wang and Chaolin Li
Sustainability 2023, 15(2), 1443; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021443 - 12 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1293
Abstract
Challenges are always proposed when pursuing more energy and resource recovery from waste activated sludge via the anaerobic digestion (AD) process. Recently, microbial electrolysis has been integrated with AD and has been proven to enhance sludge conversion and system stability. This study investigated [...] Read more.
Challenges are always proposed when pursuing more energy and resource recovery from waste activated sludge via the anaerobic digestion (AD) process. Recently, microbial electrolysis has been integrated with AD and has been proven to enhance sludge conversion and system stability. This study investigated the effect of organic load on fermentation and biogas production in a bioelectrolysis-assisted AD reactor. Four different organic loads of alkaline waste sludge from 6 g/L to 14 g/L were investigated for their effects on the methanogenesis rate, substrate metabolism, electrochemical performance, and contribution. The results showed that the integrated system had a stronger tolerance to organic loads than the traditional anaerobic system. When the sludge concentration reached 14 g/L, the methanogenic rate, total methane yield, and SS removal rate significantly increased, reaching 47.1 mL/d, 96.2 mL/gVSS, and 71.6%, which were 1.27, 2.08, and 1.28 times those of the control, respectively. A high organic load was beneficial to the overall methanogenic rate but prolonged the fermentation period. Under a low organic load, the energy efficiency of the system deteriorated because the power loss increased and the electrochemical contribution rate was less than 50%. This result suggests that the integrated system can work and improve the overall energy yield from a high organic load of wasted sludge digestion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Microbial Processes-Centered Technologies towards Enhanced and Sustainable Wastewater Treatment)
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12 pages, 2507 KiB  
Article
Effect of Zero Water Exchange Systems for Litopenaeus vannamei Using Sponge Biocarriers to Control Inorganic Nitrogen and Suspended Solids Simultaneously
by Zhiwen Song, Chao Liu, Yazhi Luan, Yapeng Qi and Ailing Xu
Sustainability 2023, 15(2), 1271; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021271 - 9 Jan 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1679
Abstract
The traditional shrimp farming mode, which mainly uses water exchange to dilute toxic nitrogenous compounds, not only brings risks of disease infections and outbreaks but also results in waste of water resources and has a negative impact on the environment. In this study, [...] Read more.
The traditional shrimp farming mode, which mainly uses water exchange to dilute toxic nitrogenous compounds, not only brings risks of disease infections and outbreaks but also results in waste of water resources and has a negative impact on the environment. In this study, zero water exchange systems for Litopenaeus vannamei were constructed by using sponge biocarriers with precultured biofilms (SBBFs), and the effect of SBBFs on controlling inorganic nitrogen, suspended solids and on the performance of L. vannamei was determined. The experiment consisted of four treatments: (1) SBC (control, SB 5% (v/v) + aeration); (2) SBBF2.5a (SBBF 2.5% (v/v) + aeration); (3) SBBF5a (SBBF 5% (v/v) + aeration); and (4) SBBF5 (SBBF 5% (v/v)). The results showed that the concentrations of TAN and NO2−-N in the SBBF treatments were significantly lower than those in the SBC treatments, while the SBBF treatments registered higher NO3−-N concentrations. After the adsorbates were removed by regular cleaning to regenerate the adsorption capacity of the SBs, the turbidity was reduced by 47.8%~71.5%. The shrimp grown in the SBBF treatments exhibited a higher mean final weight, survival and productivity than those grown in the SBC treatments. This work found that the use of SBBFs can maintain the low levels of TAN, NO2−-N and suspended solids while improving the performance of the L. vannamei under the strict requirement of zero water exchange. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application of Microbial Processes-Centered Technologies towards Enhanced and Sustainable Wastewater Treatment)
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