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Advanced Biological Wastewater Treatment and Nutrient Removal
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Advanced Biological Wastewater Treatment and Nutrient Removal

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2025 | Viewed by 1576

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Hong Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Interests: biological nitrogen removal; anammox; biofilm; denitrifying phosphorus removal; activated sludge
Dr. Qiulai He

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Hunan Engineering Research Center of Water Security Technology and Application, College of Civil Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China
Interests: biological wastewater treatment; aerobic granular sludge; in situ sludge reduction; phosphorus removal and recovery; GHGs reduction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Yingmu Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Civil Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350116, China
Interests: biological nitrogen removal; bioelectrochemical technology; anammox; autotrophic denitrification; microalgae; constructed wetland; MABR; GHGs reduction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The traditional activated sludge process, developed over more than 100 years ago, has become the most widely adopted biological treatment technology in wastewater treatment plants worldwide. However, with the continuous increase in wastewater production and the tightening of discharge standards, the traditional biological treatment process faces several challenges, including low treatment efficiency, high energy consumption, and low volumetric load. These limitations make it difficult to meet the new demands for efficient and low-energy wastewater treatment under carbon-neutral targets. In recent years, innovations in wastewater biological treatment theories have driven technological advancements and attracted widespread attention from researchers.

This Special Issue mainly focuses on cutting-edge research and technological applications related to advanced wastewater biological treatment and nutrient removal. For this Special Issue, we invite the submission of original research papers or review papers. The topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  1. New principles and metabolic pathways for biological nitrogen and phosphorus removal from wastewater;
  2. Stable operation and optimization strategies for the anammox process;
  3. Applications and regulation of aerobic granular sludge technology;
  4. New biofilm technologies based on functional carriers;
  5. Engineering applications of new technologies for nitrogen and phosphorus removal from wastewater.

Dr. Hong Wang
Dr. Qiulai He
Dr. Yingmu Wang
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

  • wastewater biological treatment
  • nitrogen and phosphorus removal
  • anammox
  • aerobic granular sludge technology
  • biofilm technology
  • wastewater treatment plant upgrade

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 4856 KiB  
Article
Worldwide Research Progress and Trends in Application of Machine Learning to Wastewater Treatment: A Bibliometric Analysis
by Kun Zhou, Boran Wu and Xin Zhang
Water 2025, 17(9), 1314; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17091314 - 28 Apr 2025
Viewed by 421
Abstract
Efficient wastewater treatment with high-quality effluent and minimal operational costs and carbon emissions is vital for safeguarding the ecological environment and promoting human health. However, the wastewater treatment process is extremely complicated due to the characteristics of multiple treatment mechanisms, high disturbance variability [...] Read more.
Efficient wastewater treatment with high-quality effluent and minimal operational costs and carbon emissions is vital for safeguarding the ecological environment and promoting human health. However, the wastewater treatment process is extremely complicated due to the characteristics of multiple treatment mechanisms, high disturbance variability and nonlinear behaviors; therefore, optimizing the wastewater treatment process through intelligent control is a long-standing challenge for researchers and operators. Machine learning models are regarded as effective tools for wastewater treatment with better simulating and controlling complex nonlinear behaviors. With the aid of bibliometric analysis, this paper aimed to summarize worldwide research progress and trends in the application of machine learning to wastewater treatment among 1226 related publications. The findings indicate that China and the United States are the two leading countries, with publications of 342 and 209, respectively, while the United States is an outstanding global collaboration leader in this field. Research institutions and authors are mainly from developing countries, and China accounts for the largest proportion of these. The analysis of journal and cited journal contributions report that almost all of the top 10 journals in publications belong to the Q1 quartile (9/10). Overall, future research will likely focus on developing systematic, strong and multi-objective models for wastewater treatment. A hybrid model could take advantage of two or more machine learning models or mechanistic models, which have been verified as excellent models for tackling limited data. Thus, predicting the pollutants in the effluent rather than the influent using hybrid models is attracting increasing attention because effective prediction contributes to reducing the loading shock of influent sharp fluctuation to wastewater treatment effluent quality. Also, the development of advanced data acquirement devices and the AI model prediction with partially default data should also be another focus of future research. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Biological Wastewater Treatment and Nutrient Removal)
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27 pages, 6742 KiB  
Article
Removal of Nitrogen and Phosphorus from Municipal Wastewater Through Cultivation of Microalgae Chlorella sp. in Consortium
by Flor Maria Ortega-Blas, José C. Ramos-Saravia and Pablo Luis Cossío-Rodríguez
Water 2025, 17(8), 1160; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17081160 - 13 Apr 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 548
Abstract
Demographic growth in developing countries has increased domestic wastewater generation, posing environmental and health risks due to nitrogen and phosphorus accumulation, the main contributors to eutrophication. This study explores microalgae–bacteria consortia for nutrient removal, using Chlorella sp. for its high pollutant assimilation efficiency [...] Read more.
Demographic growth in developing countries has increased domestic wastewater generation, posing environmental and health risks due to nitrogen and phosphorus accumulation, the main contributors to eutrophication. This study explores microalgae–bacteria consortia for nutrient removal, using Chlorella sp. for its high pollutant assimilation efficiency and biomass production. A lab-scale experiment was designed using response surface methodology to optimize key variables, revealing that lighting and the culture medium significantly influenced biomass production and nutrient removal, with lighting having the strongest statistical impact (p = 0.0002). The optimal conditions (18 μmolm−2 s−1 light, municipal wastewater) achieved nitrogen and phosphorus removal efficiencies of 87.16% and 94.43%, respectively. A mathematical model was developed with two independent systems: (1) the first describes biomass generation via photosynthesis, considering CO2 as a limiting substrate, while (2) the second models nitrogen and phosphorus consumption, assuming nitrogen as limiting substrate and introducing an intermediate (I) that couples phosphorus and nitrogen removal. This coupling is regulated by factor k, which represents a percentage of the total consortium consumption rate. Model predictions showed high accuracy for biomass (SE = 0.07186) and phosphorus (SE = 0.63065), but nitrogen exhibited greater deviation (SE = 3.40285). These findings highlight the system’s potential as a sustainable and cost-effective wastewater treatment alternative. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Biological Wastewater Treatment and Nutrient Removal)
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9 pages, 1847 KiB  
Article
Effect of Co-Dewatering for Aerobic Granular Sludge and Alum Sludge
by Yongfei Chen, Kangmei Tu, Dongsheng Qian, Ningyu Li and Ailan Yan
Water 2025, 17(5), 705; https://doi.org/10.3390/w17050705 - 28 Feb 2025
Viewed by 357
Abstract
Sludge dewatering plays a crucial and indispensable role in the sludge treatment and disposal process, directly affecting the subsequent disposal costs and environmental risks. Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) and alum sludge (AS) from water treatment plants are two common types of sludge with [...] Read more.
Sludge dewatering plays a crucial and indispensable role in the sludge treatment and disposal process, directly affecting the subsequent disposal costs and environmental risks. Aerobic granular sludge (AGS) and alum sludge (AS) from water treatment plants are two common types of sludge with distinct dewatering properties. In this experiment, we thoroughly investigated the effects of co-dewatering by mixing AGS and AS in different proportions. The results showed that the addition of the AS effectively altered the composition and characteristics of the AGS, which significantly improved its settlement performance. When the AGS and AS were mixed in a specific proportion, the water content of the dewatered AGS was reduced from 81.2% to 70.9%, which fully demonstrated a significant improvement in the AGS dewatering performance achieved through the mixed treatment. It is recommended to be widely promoted and applied in practical engineering. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Biological Wastewater Treatment and Nutrient Removal)
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