Emerging Technologies for Sustainable Water Treatment

Dear Colleagues,

The 21st century has been faced with many challenges including the availability of clean drinking water. Scientists forecast that the remainder of the 21st century will be faced with a harsh decade-long drought (i.e., megadroughts). NASA scientists have reported that water shortages will be the main environmental challenge of the century. With the water crisis looming, scientists have been exploring technologies and avenues on how to produce freshwater. For example, in the Middle East, artificially generated freshwater is produced via reverse osmosis or by thermal distillation of saltwater. On the other hand, highly populated countries such as the US, China, and India all primarily depend on fossil groundwater to feed and water their populations. These countries are generally draining their stores at an increasingly alarming rate without attending to solutions. The challenges in the availability of these water resources are even exacerbated by several issues related to water pollution, physical alterations of topographical and geographical waterbody locations, population growth, urbanization, effects of climate change, and water over-exploitation. These challenges not only affect humanity but also all forms of life dependent on water. In order to mitigate these challenges, countries around the world are exploring avenues on how to leverage research and development initiatives with policies and measures with the overarching goal of providing safe drinking water to human life and the biota. In this Special Issue, we welcome all technological developments involving the sequestration of impurities in water. Specifically, this Special Issue will explore topics related to photocatalytic degradation (i.e., nanoparticles for sequestration of impurities), new mechanical approaches (new filters, bioreactors), other methodologies for wastewater treatment that includes chemical and non-chemical methods, mechanisms involved in the water sequestration of impurities, analytical method development, statistical methods and optimization, artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches, applications of chemometrics, and sensor (metal organics, semiconductors) development and applications within the realm of impurity sequestration of water. Additionally, this Special Issue also welcomes various policies and promising synergistic proposals to address the aforementioned challenges.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas related to emerging technologies for sustainable water treatment may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Water impurities;
• Sequestration of impurities;
• Photocatalytic degradation;
• Nanoparticles for sequestration of impurities;
• New mechanical approaches;
• Novel filters;
• Bioreactors;
• Other methodologies for wastewater treatment that includes chemical and non-chemical methods and mechanisms involved in the water sequestration of impurities;
• Analytical method development;
• Statistical methods and optimization;
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches;
• Applications of chemometrics;
• Sensor (metal organics, semiconductors) development and applications;
• Policy development.

We look forward to receiving your contributions. 

Dr. Gerard Dumancas
Prof. Dr. Arnold Alguno
Prof. Dr. R.Y. Capangpangan
Dr. Arnold Lubguban
Prof. Dr. Roberto M. Malaluan
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.