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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2024) | Viewed by 6673

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Peng Yang

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Guest Editor

Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, IL 60439, USA
Interests: mineral-water interfacial processes; electrical double layer; fate and transport of pollutants; redox reactions in geochemical settings; mineral transformation; X-ray scattering and absorption

Dr. Xiaoming Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Interests: phosphate; heavy metals; nano-minerals; interfacial reactions and behavior; spectroscopic techniques; recycle

Dr. Menghua Cao

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Guest Editor

College of Resources and Environment, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Interests: persistent organic contaminants; heavy metals; chemical oxidation; adsorption; iron; fenton-like systems

Dr. Jing He

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

School of Environment and Resources, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China
Interests: endocrine disrupting chemicals; pharmaceuticals and personal care products; microplastics; water environment; adsorption/desorption; environmental behavior; recycle

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In the last century, resource shortage and water pollution have constituted major crises, and these issues are inevitably exacerbated as the world’s population and economy grow. To mitigate these challenges, people have developed various technologies for obtaining clean water and have proposed a variety of methods for recovering resources from waste. However, novel environmentally friendly technologies are still needed. Therefore, it is crucial that we develop novel technologies to improve current water treatment and exploit renewable resources from this process. Wastewater or waste from water treatment is a good source of renewable resources (e.g., N and P); thus, recovering valuable resources from waste not only decreases disposal costs but also abates the over-exploitation of natural resources (e.g., mining for P and metals).

This Special Issue will collect original research articles and reviews detailing methods to improve our current water treatment and advancing our understanding of renewable resources recovery from water treatment. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following.

Papers addressing:
- Turbidity;
- Salinity;
- Scale and sludge;
- Corrosion;
- Foaming.
Removal of contaminants from water (e.g., adsorption, precipitation, oxidation, reduction, reverse osmosis, electromagnetics, etc.), such as:
- Inorganic contaminants;
- Organic contaminants;
- Heavy metals;
- Emerging contaminants.
Resource recovery from water treatment, such as:
- N;
- P;
- Metals.

Dr. Peng Yang
Dr. Xiaoming Wang
Dr. Menghua Cao
Dr. Jing He
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. 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

water treatment
turbidity
salinity
sludge
scale
corrosion
contaminant removal
heavy metals
emerging contaminant
resource recovery
nitrogen
phosphorus

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 3155 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Bio-Coated Graphitic Carbon Nitrides for Enhanced Nitrobenzene Degradation: Roles of Extracellular Electron Transfer

by Yuming Wang, Yi Li, Longfei Wang, Wenlong Zhang and Thomas Bürgi

Sustainability 2023, 15(23), 16372; https://doi.org/10.3390/su152316372 - 28 Nov 2023

Viewed by 725

Abstract

Graphitic carbon nitrides (g-C₃N₄) and microorganisms could collaboratively enhance photocatalytic properties or facilitate environmental depollution through coupled photocatalytic and biological reactions, which prevented the destruction of photocatalytic stresses to ecological systems and resulted in a sustainable technology for water remediation in rivers and lakes. However, the roles of bio-substances as well as electronic interactions between inorganic and organic systems were still unclear. Herein, g-C₃N₄, nitrogen-deficient g-C₃N₄ (ND-g-C₃N₄), and fluorinated g-C₃N₄ (F-g-C₃N₄) were coated with representative bacteria, i.e., Escherichia coli MG 1655, and characterized using integrated spectroscopic techniques. Photocatalytic activities were then evaluated through nitrobenzene degradation performance in an aqueous solution under visible light illumination. Nano-photocatalysts were observed to be adsorbed onto bio-aggregates, and surface hydrophilicity was convinced to be determined in the toxicity of photocatalysts in dark environments. Layered structures of ND-g-C₃N₄ and F-g-C₃N₄ were revealed in XRD spectra, and surface coverage of the Luria–Bertani medium was eliminated during E. coli cultivation. Hetero-junctions between photocatalysts and bio-substances were indicated in XPS results. Red-shifts for g-C₃N₄ and F-g-C₃N₄ materials as well as a slight blue-shift for ND-g-C₃N₄ were demonstrated in UV-vis spectra, which might be attributed to the destruction of nitrogen defects on ND-g-C₃N₄. Owing to the attached bio-substances, nitrobenzene removal could reach twice that with pristine photocatalysts, and ROS quantitative analysis confirmed that hydroxyl radicals were the determined reactive species degrading nitrobenzene in the water solution. The observation of more OH species generation indicated that extracellular electron transfer of E. coli reduced electron–hole recombination and provided reduction sites during photocatalytic degradation of nitrobenzene. This work proved additional electron-transfer paths and reaction mechanisms in hybridized photocatalytic and biological processes, which indicated that bio-activities could be a great promoter of material modification and the incorporation between inorganic and organic systems successfully showed an eco-friendly and sustainable pathway to utilize photocatalysts in natural water. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Water Treatment)

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13 pages, 3299 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Application of Improved Particle Swarm Optimization SVM in Water Quality Evaluation of Ming Cui Lake

by Zunyang Zhang, Cheng Yang, Qiao Qiao, Xuesheng Li, Fuping Wang and Chengcheng Li

Sustainability 2023, 15(12), 9835; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15129835 - 20 Jun 2023

Viewed by 997

Abstract

Water quality directly determines our living environment. In order to establish a more scientific and reasonable water quality evaluation model, it needs a lot of data support, but it will lead to a large increase in the calculation time of the evaluation model. This paper proposes an improved particle swarm optimization SVM model (CPOS-SVM) to solve this problem. In this paper, the Pareto optimal solution concept is used to sparsely process the training set, which can ensure that the number of training sets is reduced without loss of data characteristics, thus reducing the training time. In order to solve the problem of the kernel parameter g and penalty factor c on the SVM algorithm, which affects the accuracy of the SVM model but it is difficult to select why, a particle swarm optimization algorithm is used in this paper to optimize the kernel parameter and penalty factor and improve the accuracy of the model. In this paper, 480 sets of data from Ming Cui Lake from 2014 to 2022 are taken as the research object, and examples are analyzed in MATLAB 2020a. The results show that the training time of the CPOS-SVM model can be completed within 2 s and does not increase with the increase of data volume. Meanwhile, by comparing the SVM model, POS-SVM model, and POS-BP model, training time increases dramatically with the amount of data. The accuracy of the POS-SVM model is the highest, and the accuracy of the CPOS-SVM model is basically consistent with that of the POS-SVM, reaching 94%, while the accuracy of the SVM model and the POS-BP model are slightly worse. This indicates that the CPOS-SVM model has good application value in water quality evaluation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Water Treatment)

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15 pages, 4300 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Simulation Study on Risk and Influencing Factors of Cadmium Loss in Contaminated Soil

by Sheng Wang, Qi Liu, Zhizong Liu, Jie He, Li Bao, Jilai Zhang and Naiming Zhang

Sustainability 2023, 15(2), 1553; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021553 - 13 Jan 2023

Viewed by 1222

Abstract

Cadmium (Cd) in contaminated soil not only enters surface water via rainfall runoff but also penetrates groundwater, adversely affecting human health through the food chain. This research examined three kinds of soil from Luoping County in southwestern China, with different Cd pollution levels. Simulated rainfall and soil column leaching experiments were conducted to explore the risks and factors influencing Cd loss in surface runoff and underground leaching water at different ground slopes (6°, 12°, 18°, and 24°), rainfall intensities (30, 60, and 90 mm∙h⁻¹), and soil profile conditions. The results show that the risk of soil Cd runoff loss increased at a higher rainfall intensity or Cd pollution degree, reaching a peak at a ground slope of 18°. The main factor affecting soil Cd runoff loss was rainfall intensity followed by Cd soil pollution degree and slope. The risk of soil Cd leaching loss was mainly determined by the leaching time and soil depth. The primary factor affecting soil Cd leaching loss was leaching time, followed by soil depth. The soil organic matter (SOM) concentration and pH minimally affected soil Cd loss. The research results provide a theoretical basis for risk management and control of cadmium loss in contaminated soil, and indicate that the environment-friendly water treatment method of high concentration Cd polluted runoff deserves attention. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Water Treatment)

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16 pages, 3129 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Bisphenol A and 17α-Ethinylestradiol Removal from Water by Hydrophobic Modified Acicular Mullite

by Qiuhong Zhou, Xi Luo, Jing He, Jinsong Guo, Chengjian Xu, Yanlei Wan, Guangcheng Xiong and Qi Xu

Sustainability 2022, 14(21), 14248; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142114248 - 1 Nov 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1091

Abstract

The hydrophilicity and hydrophobicity of adsorbents have an important influence on organic pollutants adsorption. To effectively remove bisphenol A (BPA) and 17-acetylene estradiol (EE2) from water, acicular mullite was modified by cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTMAB) to increase the hydrophobicity of the mullite. The adsorption process and mechanism of BPA and EE2 by modified acicular mullite were studied in detail. Results indicated that the concentration of CTMAB solution was related to the contact angle of CTMAB-modified mullite (CTMAB-M). The optimal concentration of CTMAB was 4 mmol/L. The CTMAB-M could adsorb more hydrophobic organic pollutants than virgin acicular mullite. Due to the electrostatic attraction and hydrophobic partitioning, the adsorption amount of BPA and EE2 on CTMAB-M increased with increasing pH. The adsorption amounts of BPA and EE2 on CTMAB-M increase with increasing ionic strength. The adsorption kinetics of BPA and EE2 adsorption on CTMAB-M could be best described by the pseudo second-order kinetics model. Thermodynamic analysis showed that the low temperature favored the adsorption of BPA and EE2 on CTMAB-M, and the adsorption was driven by entropy increase. Site energy studies indicated that BPA and EE2 firstly occupy high-energy adsorption sites and then switch to low-energy sites during the adsorption process. The average adsorption site energy μ(E*) of EE2 on CTMAB-M is smaller than BPA. CTMAB modification can significantly improve the removal efficiency of ceramsite on EDCs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Water Treatment)

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16 pages, 4169 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Whole Process CFD Numerical Simulation of Flow Field and Suspended Solids Distribution in a Full-Scale High-Rate Clarifier

by Qi Xu, Xi Luo, Chengjian Xu, Yanlei Wan, Guangcheng Xiong, Hao Chen, Qiuhong Zhou, Dan Yan, Xiang Li, Yingxi Li and Huijuan Liu

Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10624; https://doi.org/10.3390/su141710624 - 26 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1617

Abstract

To further reduce the contents of phosphorus and suspended solids (SS) in the effluent, the high-rate clarifier is adopted by some wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to upgrade their processes. However, due to the complex phosphorus species and unclear hydraulic characteristics after the addition of the high-rate clarifier, the removal efficiencies of total phosphorus and the optimization strategies of SS removal remain unclear. The high-rate clarifiers are mainly composed of the mixing zone and the settling zone. Only the hydraulic characteristics of the mixing zone have been studied. It is necessary to focus on the hydrodynamics of the settling zone to understand the sedimentation process and pollutant removal mechanism in depth. Therefore, this study focused on the whole process of high-rate clarifier of the Wuhan Nantaizi Lake WWTP in China. The distributions of flow velocity and SS in the full-scale high-rate clarifier were simultaneously simulated by the solid-liquid two-phase whole process computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model which was established in this study. The simulated results of the developed CFD model were in good agreement with the experimental data obtained in the high-rate clarifier. The normalized standard error was less than 7.66%. The overall flow velocities in the settling tank were much smaller than that in the reaction tank. After the fluid passed through the diversion effect of the overflow wall and the under-through channel, the overall kinetic energy loss was relatively large. Meanwhile, the residence time of fluid in the settling tank was longer than that in the reaction tank. The sludge sedimentation happened at the edge of the settling tank due to the vertical angle between the plug-flow fluid and the outlet. The successful construction of the CFD model could lay the foundation for the next step of the high-rate clarifier optimization operation and research on pollutant removal. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability in Water Treatment)

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