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Advancing Innovation in Sustainable Treatment of Water and Wastewater

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 11 September 2026 | Viewed by 829

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Grupo de Fotocatálisis y Espectroscopía para Aplicaciones Medioambientales (FEAM), Instituto de Estudios Ambientales y Recursos Naturales (i-UNAT), Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Campus Universitario de Tafira, 35017 Las Palmas, Spain
Interests: wastewater treatment; marine pollution; constructed wetlands; ponds
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Water is one of the "sine qua non" factors for life.

Threats such as droughts, floods, and water pollution are becoming more frequent and severe, so efficient and sustainable water management has become a priority. Innovation in sustainable water treatment is essential to meet present and future environmental challenges, to ensure access to this vital resource for future generations.

Therefore, water treatment techniques must evolve to achieve better treatment efficiencies, i.e., the greater removal of contaminants at lower economic and environmental costs. These technologies will be sustainable if they are also accessible to all societies.

Drinking water production techniques, such as reverse osmosis or electrodialysis, involve high levels of treatment. However, they are not only expensive but also have a significant environmental impact caused by the discharge of brine on coastal areas. Their combination with renewable energies is helping to reduce their environmental impact.

Water distribution and demand reduction systems are another area to be improved. Solutions based on artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things have great application potential, e.g., in the early detection of leaks and the real-time monitoring of the quality and quantity of the resource.

Another crucial aspect is the treatment and reuse of wastewater. There is a wide variety of advanced treatment systems ranging from the most sophisticated, such as filters based on nanotechnology or electrochemical methods, to nature-based methods, such as constructed wetlands (CWs) with adsorbent substrates or aerated CWs.

This Special Issue aims to present the latest innovations in water treatment, whether for supply, waste, or reuse.

Dr. José Alberto Herrera-Melián
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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
  • innovation
  • wastewater
  • water supply
  • water saving
  • wastewater reuse

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

24 pages, 1742 KB  
Article
Vegetal Waste as a Sustainable Option to Boost Sorption for the Efficient Removal of Steroid Hormones in Constructed Wetlands
by José Alberto Herrera-Melián, Rayco Guedes-Alonso, Jean Carlos Tite-Lezcano, Michelangelo Fichera, Massimo Del Bubba, Ezio Ranieri, Zoraida Sosa-Ferrera and José Juan Santana-Rodríguez
Sustainability 2026, 18(7), 3395; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18073395 - 31 Mar 2026
Viewed by 360
Abstract
Steroid hormones (SHs) have a high estrogenic potential, and urban wastewater is one of their main ways into the aquatic environment. Constructed wetlands (CWs) are considered one of the most sustainable alternatives for the treatment of wastewater from small communities. However, the use [...] Read more.
Steroid hormones (SHs) have a high estrogenic potential, and urban wastewater is one of their main ways into the aquatic environment. Constructed wetlands (CWs) are considered one of the most sustainable alternatives for the treatment of wastewater from small communities. However, the use of gravel and sand implies a significant environmental impact associated with their extraction and transport. A more sustainable alternative is the use of plant residues, as they are abundant, inexpensive, and readily available, and they can improve the efficiency of hormone removal through sorption. Thus, the sorption of 15 SHs was studied on conventional, mineral substrates (gravel, sand, and volcanic ash) and alternative vegetal wastes, i.e., mulches from giant reed, palm tree, balsa wood, and pine needles. These materials were characterized by determining their Point of Zero Charge (pHPZC), ash content, content of leachable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and heavy metals, total surface area (BET), and pore characteristics. Results indicated that SH sorption on the mineral substrates was quite low, in most cases less than 10–15%. However, in the mulches it reached between 50 and 95%, except for corticosteroids (11–43%). The pseudo-second-order kinetics provided the best fit in all cases, with R2 values between 0.97 and 0.9999. Experiments with a contact time of 7 days showed that the palm tree was the only substrate that completely removed the three corticosteroids studied (cortisone, prednisone, and prednisolone). Additionally, a significant correlation was observed between removal due to sorption (%) and log octanol–water partition coefficient (log Kow). Freundlich isotherm provided a higher number of best fits than Langmuir. Lastly, to compare sand with palm mulch under more realistic experimental conditions, four lab-scale CWs (two with palm mulch and two with sand, with/without plants) were studied. The sand-based CWs achieved faster SH percentage removals, while after 24 h, SH mass removals were significantly higher in the palm mulch-based CWs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advancing Innovation in Sustainable Treatment of Water and Wastewater)
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