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Sustainable Remediation of Soil and Water Contaminant: Innovations and Practices

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 September 2024) | Viewed by 1413

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
CAS Key Laboratory of Soil Environment and Pollution Remediation, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
Interests: POPs; microbial degradation and biotransformation; enzymatic reactive mechanism; bioavailability and biological effects; microbiomics; computational chemistry; structure–activity relationships
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Environment, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China
Interests: environmental chemistry; environment function material; photodegradation; photocatalysts; adsorption; wastewater treatment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The rapid development of modern agriculture and industry and intense anthropogenic activities over the past several decades have directly and indirectly caused the immense generation and release of a wide spectrum of heavy metals, organic or inorganic pollutants, radioactive substances, eutrophic elements, newborn pathogens, and viruses into the environment. And there is concern about the conventional and newly emerging contaminants due to the great hazards and risks they place on ecological systems and human health. To reduce environmental contaminants, critical legislations and a series of action plans for environmental protection are legally enacted by many countries. Moreover, a number of techniques, methodologies, and strategies have been or are being developed at the same time to support pollution administration and remediation. In association with the atmospheric phase, water and soil entities often serve as the major reservoir of most of the contaminants in our terrestrial ecosystems. In consideration of higher contamination levels and severe situations in the typical areas of soil and water, contamination remediation is of uttermost importance for the restoration of ecological balance. We hope that this Special Issue, titled “Sustainable Remediation of Soil and Water Contaminant: Innovations and Practices”, will serve as an international forum that exclusively facilitates the innovations and practices of remediation methods and the improvement in remediation efficacy and sustainability. This Special Issue aims to publish innovative works focusing on the research and development of catalytically degrading materials and the pilot application of novel techniques, e.g., advanced oxidation–reduction, physical desorption, immobilization, phytoremediation, microbial degradation, in situ biological process, recycle/reuse, and engineering terms for the removal of contaminants in soil and water. We aim to publish experimental and theoretical studies on remediation mechanisms and environmental risk assessment in association with the service for sustainable remediation, e.g., the bioavailability, toxicological profiles, and concentration–response relationships of new contaminants in aquatic and terrestrial systems, and conceptual models and studies focusing on the basic principles or frameworks established for remediation sustainability are also welcome. However, the report only focuses on environmental concentration and monitoring measures, laboratory studies that are lacking in innovation and novelty in pollution remediation, or issues specifically linked to atmospheric pollution that are not temporarily considered in this Special Issue.

The submission of full-length research papers, original reviews, short communications, or novel perspectives on the methods, principles, and mechanistic insights for sustainable remediation and the environmental risks of new contaminants in soil and water are all welcome and would be accepted efficiently in the short period after the critical peer-review process, given that the manuscripts offer interesting results and have not been published previously or under the consideration of other publishers.

The topics of interest for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Environmental hazards of new contaminants in soil and water;
  • Bioavailability and biological effect;
  • Concentration-response relationships;
  • Models developed for risk assessment;
  • Novel development of remediation methods and materials;
  • Degradation or biotransformation mechanism of contaminants;
  • Practice of physical/chemical/microbial/phytoremediation;
  • Models and framework for evaluation of remediation sustainability. 

Dr. Chenggang Gu
Dr. Huan He
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

  • new contaminants
  • soil
  • water
  • innovative remediation techniques
  • remediation materials
  • underlying mechanism for degradation and biotransformation
  • remediation sustainability
  • bioavailability
  • toxicity
  • risk assessment model

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 2543 KiB  
Article
Composting as a Sustainable Solution for the Management of Plant Biomass Contaminated with Hg and As from Puddles Generated by Small-Scale Gold Mining in the Municipality of Unión Panamericana, Colombian Pacific
by Gysela Rengifo-Mosquera, Manuel Salas-Moreno, Harry Gutierréz-Palacios, Yuber Palacios-Torres, Allien Romaña-Palacios and José Marrugo-Negrete
Sustainability 2024, 16(22), 9940; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16229940 - 14 Nov 2024
Viewed by 954
Abstract
ASGM in the Chocó region (Colombian Pacific) has generated abandoned puddles with concentrations of Hg; however, these sites can generate ecosystem services from contaminated biomass with a circular economy approach. (1) Background: The plant biomass contaminated with Hg from these puddles could be [...] Read more.
ASGM in the Chocó region (Colombian Pacific) has generated abandoned puddles with concentrations of Hg; however, these sites can generate ecosystem services from contaminated biomass with a circular economy approach. (1) Background: The plant biomass contaminated with Hg from these puddles could be used to produce compost as a bioremediation strategy and as an alternative to generate ecosystem resources (organic fertilizer) with nature-based solutions, representing a circular economy approach and sustainable management of contaminated biomass. (2) Methods: Six treatments were established to produce compost; closed-system plastic composters were used, with a capacity of 15 kg of biomass and organic waste, consisting of contaminated and uncontaminated biomass of macrophytes with Hg and fruit and vegetable waste (fruit and vegetable waste, pruning waste, and poultry manure). The concentrations of As and total and bioavailable Hg were monitored during the composting process by atomic absorption spectroscopy and so were properties such as pH; electrical conductivity; temperature; CO, TN, S, and SiO2 contents; and C/N ratio. (3) Conclusions: The concentrations of bioavailable Hg during the composting process were between 658.1 and 1.2 µg/kg, decreasing in the following order: T-2 > T-3 > T-1 > C-3 > C-2 > C-1. Composting in the treatments was shown to be an efficient bioremediation technique, as all of the treatments reduced the bioavailability of Hg to below 1.5%, and the physicochemical properties of pH (r: −0.3675; p < 0.007) and %S content (r: −0.6303; p < 0.0025) showed a significant moderate negative correlation with bioavailable Hg concentrations, playing a crucial role in reducing the bioavailability of Hg during the purification process of composting. The results show that all treatments significantly reduced Hg bioavailability below 1.5%; however, T-2 proportionally showed the highest reductions during the process. Compost production was proven to be a sustainable strategy for the management of biomass contaminated with mercury, which is very important for recovering ecosystem services in communities. Full article
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