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Special Issue "Resource Recovery Monitoring and Circular Economy Model in Wastewater"

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A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Wastewater Treatment and Reuse".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 10 November 2023 | Viewed by 430

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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Wastewater has long been viewed as waste that simply needs to be treated in order to be released into the environment as clean water. However, wastewater, similarly to solid waste, is a source of various secondary resources and therefore can and should become part of the circular economy.

This Special Issue is dedicated to discussing ways and opportunities for wastewater to "participate" in the circular economy. How many and what kind of resources, material and energetic, are recovered? What is the recovery potential? What solutions and technologies are already used in practice (i.e., do you have any case studies that could be analyzed and presented?), and what is still being developed and tested? Papers concerning how to monitor resource recovery from wastewater or sewage sludge, e.g., developing and applying indicators for CE in the water and wastewater sectors, are particularly of interest.

These topics deserve increased attention from researchers and practitioners. The legal framework is also evolving, and incentives for resource recovery are being created. Thus, papers on the mentioned topics are welcome to this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Jolita Kruopienė
Prof. Dr. Marzena Smol
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. Water 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 2600 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

circular economy
wastewater sector
indicators
resources from wastewater
resources from sewage sludge
resource recovery
monitoring framework
sustainability

Published Papers (1 paper)

Research

Open AccessArticle

Ammonium Recovery from Synthetic Wastewaters by Using Zeolitic Mixtures: A Desorption Batch-Study

Sofia Maria Muscarella

Vito Armando Laudicina

Luigi Badalucco

Pellegrino Conte

and

Giorgio Mannina

Water 2023, 15(19), 3479; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15193479 - 03 Oct 2023

Viewed by 187

Abstract

Resource recovery from wastewater is very important in view of a circular economy approach in the water field. Among the different technologies applied to realize circular economy, an attractive option is the use of nutrient-enriched media that can be utilized as slow-release fertilizers. Zeolites have been re-discovered for their key role in ammonium (NH₄⁺) adsorption from treated wastewater. Although many studies have been carried out to assess the ability of zeolites to adsorb NH₄⁺, only few papers concerning NH₄⁺ desorption from zeolites are available in the literature. Therefore, this study investigated NH₄⁺ desorption from mineralogically different zeolites, before (ZNS and ZNC) and after (ZSS and ZSC) their treatment with sodium chloride. The zeolites differed in mordenite content. The amount of the desorbed NH₄⁺ varied from 78 to 84% of the total NH₄⁺ adsorbed. In particular, the NaCl-treated materials showed the largest desorption (27.6 ± 0.2 mg L⁻¹, and 27.9 ± 0.7 mg L⁻¹, ZSS, and ZSC, respectively) as compared to the untreated zeolites (22.9 ± 0.3 mg L⁻¹, and 24.2 ± 0.3 mg L⁻¹, ZNS, and ZNC, respectively) because of the different affinity of the cations for the zeolite surface. A monomodal pseudo-first-order model best approximated the desorption kinetics, suggesting only one mechanism of NH₄⁺ desorption from zeolites. Such a mechanism is based on the ion exchange between dissolved Na⁺ and adsorbed NH₄⁺. The desorption kinetics also showed that NH₄⁺ desorbed slower from the NaCl-treated zeolites than the untreated ones. This effect was explained by the different affinity of Na⁺ and NH₄⁺ for the zeolite surfaces as due to the diverse sizes of the Na⁺ and NH₄⁺ hydration spheres. By revealing the effect of zeolite mineralogy and surface treatments in the desorption of NH₄⁺, this study can suggest new and effective synthetic strategies for the achievement of cheap new materials to be applied in environmental remediation within a circular economy perspective. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Resource Recovery Monitoring and Circular Economy Model in Wastewater)

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