Wastewater as a Resource: Sustainable Management and Utilization
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Water Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 142
Special Issue Editors
Interests: interfacial adsorption mechanisms and water-purification principles
Interests: solid waste valorization; novel cementitious materials; wastewater heavy metal remediation
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This Special Issue seeks original research and review articles focusing on the sustainable management and utilization of wastewater as a resource. Additionally, it aims to re-frame municipal, industrial, and agricultural wastewater as a renewable stock of water, energy, nutrients, and materials. Rapid urbanization, tightening discharge limits, and the global push toward carbon neutrality are converging to make wastewater one of the last under-exploited circular-economy assets. We therefore invite contributions that advance the science, engineering, and governance required to (i) recover clean water with minimum life-cycle energy and chemical footprints, (ii) harvest embedded resources such as carbon–biogas, nitrogen, phosphorus, cellulose, metals, and so on, and (iii) integrate these recovery loops into resilient, climate-positive urban–rural systems.
We particularly invite contributions that advance next-generation resource-recovery schemes—enabled by novel materials such as high-selectivity adsorbents or anti-fouling membranes—and that provide rigorous evidence of their performance at pilot or full scale. Priority will be given to studies that couple water-purification targets with simultaneous valorization of critical resources from municipal wastewater, high-salinity, or toxic industrial liquors. Interdisciplinary work integrating artificial-intelligence optimization, carbon-neutral design principles, and energy–economic analysis is strongly encouraged.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Low-carbon water-treatment technologies;
- Novel adsorbents and membrane materials for wastewater valorization;
- Photothermal desalination and freshwater recovery systems;
- Anaerobic and bio-electrochemical processes;
- Recovery of nutrients, proteins, and extracellular polysaccharides;
- Cellulose, alginate, bioplastics, and value-added products from sludge and side-streams;
- Metal and rare-element recovery;
- Life-cycle costing, socio-technical acceptance, and circular-economy business models;
- Policy instruments, water–energy–food nexus governance and stakeholder engagement;
- Case studies of large-scale, replicable “wastewater-as-a-resource” implementations.
Dr. Shuoxun Dong
Dr. Yuchi Chen
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 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
- nutrient recycling
- valuable metal ion recycling
- carbon recycling
- solid waste valorisation
- low-carbon water treatment process
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