Special Issue "Recent Advances in Biowaste Treatment—towards a Circular Bioeconomy"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Economic and Business Aspects of Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Guneet Kaur
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
Interests: bioprocess engineering; waste valorization; biorefinery; molecular microbiology; mathematical modelling and process optimization; in-situ product recovery
Prof. Dr. Mukesh Kumar Awasthi
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Natural Resources and Environment, Northwest A&F University, Taicheng Road 3#,Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China
Interests: soil fertility; composting; biochar; microbial diversity and technology
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The fulfilment of current sustainable development goals is based on material and energy efficiency, reduced waste generation and greenhouse gases emissions. This aligns perfectly with the concept of circular economy which has gained momentum in the recent years and is seen more than from a research perspective. Design and adoption of circular economy approaches which account for sourcing, production, consumption, disposal and reuse or recycling of resources is needed to fulfil the criteria of sustainable development. In this regard, bio-based sourcing of high value-added products from non-food and/or waste feedstocks has attracted a great deal of attention to fulfil the globally increasing resource requirement. Biowastes such as food waste, green waste, sewage sludge etc. have been increasingly generated in the recent years. For example, 880 million tonnes of food waste and green waste was generated from municipalities globally, as per the data from World Bank in 2018. Similarly, 75 million tonnes of sewage sludge was generated in 2013 which is expected to increase to 103 million tonnes by 2025. Such biowastes are significant contributors to greenhouse gases and therefore their biological treatment and/or use as feedstock in valorization technologies such as fermentation, anaerobic digestion, composting or vermicomposting etc. to produce valuable products solves the twin problems of biowaste management and high-value resource recovery. This special issue has been conceptualized to highlight some of the advances in this field.

We are interested in high quality research and critical review articles on the following topics:

- Carbon neutral technologies for treatment of biowaste.

- Bioprocessing of food waste via pure culture/mixed culture fermentation, anaerobic digestion, solid state fermentation, microalgae cultivation into high-value products.

- Renewable energy recovery from food waste and sludge.

- Strategies for composting/vermicomposting, conversion to animal feed etc. using food waste.

- Nutrient recovery and fermentation strategies using sludge.

- Pyrolysis approaches for organic waste treatment.

- Techno-economic and life-cycle assessment of organic waste treatment approaches.

Dr. Guneet Kaur
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 papers will be 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 1900 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

  • food waste
  • wastewater sludge
  • biorefinery
  • bioprocessing
  • sustainable development goals
  • resource recovery
  • bio-products
  • clean and affordable energy

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Removal of Estradiol, Diclofenac, and Triclosan by Naturally Occurring Microalgal Consortium Obtained from Wastewater
Sustainability 2021, 13(14), 7690; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147690 - 09 Jul 2021
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Abstract
The occurrence of emerging contaminants like pharmaceutical drugs and personal care products in aquatic systems is now being identified as a potential risk to human health. Since conventional wastewater treatment systems are unable to remove them sufficiently, high concentrations of some of the [...] Read more.
The occurrence of emerging contaminants like pharmaceutical drugs and personal care products in aquatic systems is now being identified as a potential risk to human health. Since conventional wastewater treatment systems are unable to remove them sufficiently, high concentrations of some of the commonly used drugs are reported to be occurring in many effluents. Microalgae-based systems have been investigated in recent years as an environmentally safe alternative to chemical oxidation methods for elimination of these emerging contaminants. Therefore, a process utilizing the microalgal consortium was assessed for its potential to tolerate environmentally high concentrations of pharmaceutical drugs and also to simultaneously remove the synthetic hormone estradiol, anti-inflammatory drug diclofenac, and antibacterial agent triclosan. The effective concentration with 50% mortality for the consortium was determined for each contaminant as 16, 8, and 8 mg L−1 for estradiol, diclofenac, and triclosan, respectively. These three drugs were then spiked separately in algal growth media at effective concentration with 50% mortality, and the microalgal growth in presence of these drugs and the drug removal was monitored in shake-flask setup. The study shows substantial removal of estradiol 91.73% ± 0.0175, diclofenac 74.68% ± 0.0092, and triclosan 78.47% ± 0.015 by the microalgal consortium during their growth phase. Further, it was observed that degradation of the drugs by microalgae was the prominent removal mechanism and not adsorption. Estradiol and diclofenac did not show any immediate negative impacts on the microalgal growth as seen from the biomass and chlorophyll content measurements. However, triclosan proved detrimental to the microalgal growth as the consortium did not survive beyond 5 days after spiking. Promising results for emerging contaminants removal was obtained, and a treatment system can be designed to remove different drugs from wastewater by using the naturally occurring microalgal consortium. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Biowaste Treatment—towards a Circular Bioeconomy)
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