Special Issue "Water, Wastewater Treatment, and Sustainable Development"

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Athanasia Tolkou
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki GR-54124, Greece
Interests: water and wastewater treatment; coagulation; adsorption; arsenic removal; fluoride removal; chromate removal

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With more than 2 billion people worldwide suffering from water scarcity, clean water is one of the most important natural resources on earth, whereas wastewater, which corresponds to spent water, can be considered as a valuable natural resource if treated and reused. This Special Issue aims to address the current pressing problems of natural water resource contamination as well as wastewater treatment and reuse. Papers are invited that investigate innovative treatment options in water engineering, highlighting the latest scientific understanding of involved chemical mechanisms.

Topics may include but are not limited to studies on:

(1) Cost-effective water treatment technologies for rural areas that can be easily implemented in developing countries, such as wetland technologies, on-site treatment technologies, and so on;

(2) Water treatment technologies for urban areas that can address contaminants of emerging concern, such as membrane filtration, adsorption, coagulation, ion exchange, and biological processes. Moreover, papers are welcome that deal with coupled processes like membrane hybrid processes. A very important aspect is also topics related to the oxidative treatment of water or wastewaters, with particular emphasis on ozonation and advanced oxidation processes; and

(3) Sustainable water and wastewater policies.

This Special Issue collects original research and critical reviews on scientific and technical information. Case studies describing real-life applications of novel technologies are also very welcome.

Dr. Athanasia Tolkou
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

  • membrane filtration
  • adsorption
  • ion exchange
  • coagulation
  • biological processes
  • ozonation
  • hybrid processes
  • wetland technologies
  • natural coagulants
  • sustainable water and wastewater treatment

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Enhancement of Methanogenic Activity in Volumetrically Undersized Reactor by Mesophilic Co-Digestion of Sewage Sludge and Aqueous Residue
Sustainability 2021, 13(14), 7728; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13147728 - 10 Jul 2021
Viewed by 498
Abstract
To date, energy recovery from biological sewage sludge (BSS) by anaerobic digestion has been very popular. However, it can often happen that anaerobic reactors are volumetrically undersized, thus reducing performance in terms of biogas production. A continuous-flow pilot-scale plant was used to investigate, [...] Read more.
To date, energy recovery from biological sewage sludge (BSS) by anaerobic digestion has been very popular. However, it can often happen that anaerobic reactors are volumetrically undersized, thus reducing performance in terms of biogas production. A continuous-flow pilot-scale plant was used to investigate, for the first time, the effects of mesophilic anaerobic co-digestion (MACoD) of sewage sludge and aqueous residue (AR) from a biosolids treatment plant (BTP) on methanogenic activity under low hydraulic retention time (HRT) conditions (to simulate the undersizing of the reactor). The results showed that the digestate is always more rapidly biodegradable than the matrices fed, while particulate COD hydrolyzed (12 ± 1.3%) is independent of the quantity of AR dosed. Feeding over 35% of soluble OLR, the total VFAs in the system strongly decreased, despite the low HRT. In correspondence with higher dosages of AR, the percentage of CH4 increased up to 77–78% and the CO2 CH4−1 ratio decreased to 0.25 ± 0.2. Specific methane production increased from 0.09 ± 0.01 m3CH4 kgCODremoved−1 with BSS alone to 0.28 ± 0.01 m3CH4CH4 kgCODremoved−1 in the case of BSS co-digested with AR. Moreover, co-digestion with AR from a BTP allowed continuous specific methanogenic activity to be enhanced from 1.76 ± 0.02 m3CH4 tVSS−1 d−1 to 6.48 ± 0.88 m3CH4 tVSS−1 d−1. Therefore, the MACoD of BSS and AR from a BTP could be a good solution to enhance methanogenic activity in a volumetrically undersized anaerobic digester with reduced HRT. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Water, Wastewater Treatment, and Sustainable Development)
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