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Biological Wastewater Treatment and Its Resource Recovery

A Special Issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441) belonging to the section "Wastewater Treatment and Reuse".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 February 2027 | Viewed by 1295

Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute of Water Research, University of Granada, 18003 Granada, Spain
Interests: wastewater treatment; resource recovery; bioengineering; biofactories; enviromental microbiology; granular bioreactors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Microbiology, University of Granada, 18017 Granada, Spain
Interests: microbiome; biological treatment; emerging contaminants; wastewater treatment; virome; granular technologies; biofilm technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Each year, 380 billion m3 of domestic wastewater is generated globally. Wastewater production is expected to increase by 24% by 2030 and 51% by 2050 with the growing population, improvements in water supply, enhanced living standards, and economic growth. However, as the common perception remains that wastewater is a source of pollution that must be treated and disposed of, it is viewed as a growing problem rather than as a valuable and sustainable source of water, energy, and nutrients. Fortunately, remediation strategies have evolved, and efforts are now focused on developing sustainable wastewater treatment facilities that recover valuable resources, such as metals, nutrients like ammonium, and energy. The increasing market value of these components, coupled with growing public awareness of the need to conserve non-renewable resources, has shifted the emphasis towards treating wastewater as a renewable resource with high value.
In this context, the traditional concept of a wastewater treatment plant is being modified towards the development of biofactories, where not only wastewater treatment takes place, but also, and significantly, the production of by-products that can support a new concept of circular economy and zero waste.

With this Special Issue ‘Biological Wastewater Treatment and Its Resource Recovery’, we aim to establish a framework for action to which new scientific contributions can be submitted in the form of articles and updated reviews that contribute to promoting knowledge of this new concept of wastewater treatment and the recovery of valuable nutrients and by-products. We therefore encourage researchers to submit their contributions and participate in this Special Issue of scientific and technical interest.

Prof. Dr. Jesus Gonzalez-Lopez
Dr. Bárbara Muñoz Palazón
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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

  • sustainable wastewater treatment
  • biofactories
  • circular economy
  • by-product from wastewaters
  • bioengineering

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 996 KB  
Article
Enhanced Organic Matter Recovery in the High-Rate Contact Stabilization Process by Addition of Waste Activated Sludge: A Pilot-Scale Study
by Kensuke Sakurai and Chika Abe
Water 2026, 18(10), 1127; https://doi.org/10.3390/w18101127 - 8 May 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 883
Abstract
The high-rate contact stabilization (HiCS) process is a potential technology for recovering energy from organic matter in wastewater; however, further performance improvement is required. This study proposes a biologically enhanced HiCS (BE-HiCS) process that introduces waste-activated sludge (WAS) from a separate conventional activated [...] Read more.
The high-rate contact stabilization (HiCS) process is a potential technology for recovering energy from organic matter in wastewater; however, further performance improvement is required. This study proposes a biologically enhanced HiCS (BE-HiCS) process that introduces waste-activated sludge (WAS) from a separate conventional activated sludge (CAS) train within a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) into the HiCS stabilization tank. The performance of the proposed process was verified using a pilot-scale plant. In a scenario combining the CAS and BE-HiCS processes, which is considered feasible for practical WWTP implementation due to the ready availability of WAS, a recovery of 0.24 ± 0.03 g-COD/g-COD of the influent COD mass was projected. This value was statistically significantly higher than that achieved by either the CAS process alone or the HiCS process alone. In this scenario, WAS was added to the BE-HiCS process at a ratio of 0.15 ± 0.03 g-COD/g-COD, resulting in a net recovery rate of 0.33 ± 0.04 g-COD/g-COD, after subtracting the COD contribution of the added WAS. The superior organic matter recovery of the BE-HiCS process was attributed to its enhanced ability to convert non-particulate organic matter into sludge through absorption and adsorption, while maintaining adequate sludge settleability for effective solid–liquid separation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Biological Wastewater Treatment and Its Resource Recovery)
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