Energy from Waste: Optimizing Recovery Processes in Wastewater Treatment
A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "B: Energy and Environment".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 19 November 2025 | Viewed by 7
Special Issue Editors
Interests: instrumentation and control; energy efficiency; heat transfer; numerical methods; water treatment; fractional calculus
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: environmental technologies; water desalination; data processing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We hereby extend a cordial invitation to you to participate in this Special Issue. Should the focus of your research be wastewater energy recovery, and should you wish to share your latest findings and innovative approaches, you are hereby encouraged to submit your manuscripts. It is vital to emphasise the pivotal function of wastewater in facilitating the transition towards a more sustainable and robust energy system.
The following areas are of particular interest in this Special Issue:
The Challenge and the Opportunity: Revaluing Wastewater:
- An analysis of the current wastewater management landscape and its environmental impact.
- Presentation of wastewater as a resource-rich source of energy potential (biogas, heat, nutrients, and osmotic and ionic gradients).
- Arguments for investing in energy recovery technologies due to their environmental, economic, and social benefits.
- Global case studies illustrating the potential of energy recovery in wastewater treatment.
The Science of Recovery: Key Processes and Innovative Technologies:
- Advanced Anaerobic Digestion: Exploration of cutting-edge technologies to optimize biogas production.
- Heat Recovery: Analysis of efficient systems for extracting thermal energy.
- Biofuel Production: Research into generating biofuels from treatment byproducts.
- Microbial Fuel Cells (MFCs): Introduction to direct electricity generation from organic matter.
Direct Osmosis (DO):
- Harnessing osmotic pressure differences between wastewater and a draw solution to generate energy or desalinate water with lower energy consumption.
Reverse Electrodialysis (RED):
- Utilizing the salinity gradient between wastewater and other saline solutions to generate electricity through ion exchange membranes.
Renewable Energy Integration:
- Combining recovered energy with solar or wind power for energy self-sufficiency.
Optimizing Efficiency: Strategies and Tools for Energy Recovery:
- Intelligent Monitoring and Control: The role of sensors, AI, and data analytics.
- Integrated Plant Design: Key considerations for facilitating energy recovery.
- Byproduct Management: Valorizing sludge and other byproducts.
- Life Cycle Analysis and Sustainability Assessment: Measuring environmental impact and economic viability.
Future Challenges and Opportunities: Towards Energy Autonomy:
- Analysis of technical, economic, and regulatory hurdles.
- Exploration of future trends and promising research avenues, including advancements in membrane technologies for DO and RED.
- The role of collaboration in driving technology adoption.
- Vision of wastewater treatment plants as energy and resource production hubs.
Dr. Alejandro Ramos Martín
Dr. Federico León Zerpa
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- wastewater energy recovery
- energy from wastewater
- wastewater treatment energy
- biogas production wastewater
- direct osmosis wastewater (DO)
- reverse electrodialysis wastewater (RED)
- wastewater heat recovery
- sustainable wastewater treatment
- circular economy wastewater
- optimizing wastewater treatment energy
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