Potentially Toxic Elements in Contaminated Water: Green Remediation Strategies

Dear Colleagues,

The occurrence of potentially toxic elements (PTEs), including As, Cd, Hg and Pb, in the environment represents an issue of global concern for aquatic systems, with a general decline in environmental quality in both freshwater and marine systems, posing risks to the health of communities that strongly rely on them.

Over the past five decades, the global water demand has tripled, driven by demographic growth and industrialization. However, this rapid increase in the uptake of water has not been accompanied by a similar improvement in infrastructures designed to ensure the quality of effluents that return to rivers, lakes, or seas. Moreover, water quality is frequently threatened by multiple pollution sources, and conventional treatment systems struggle to remove such a broad spectrum of contaminants, thus limiting clean water sources.

In recent years, knowledge of green remediation technologies for PTE-contaminated waters and wastewaters has rapidly grown, and at present, many treatment processes appear to be demonstrably feasible at the field scale. Innovative, eco-friendly, and economically feasible strategies have been developed and successfully applied. Among these are processes based on bioremediation (using microbes, plants, algae), biosorption (microbial surface binding), the use of biochar, natural or synthesized sorbents from waste materials and/or industrial by-products, and nanomaterials, and green amendments like calcined clay for metal stabilization. To reduce the environmental impact of these technologies, they are often integrated with renewable energy and smart technologies for sustainable, low-cost cleanup of real aquatic systems.

In this Special Issue, we invite submissions exploring the development of green technologies without creating new waste by-products and increasing energy demand, tackling the issue of remediation of PTE-contaminated waters and wastewaters. Survey papers and reviews are welcome.

Dr. Mery Malandrino
Dr. Stefano Bertinetti
Guest Editors

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