Green, Sustainable Wastewater Treatment Systems to Tackle Contaminants of Emerging Concern

Dear Colleagues,

Our increasing dependence on pharmaceutical compounds has led to their widespread presence in basically all kind of environmental compartments. They are usually designed to remain active for long periods of time, even after being metabolized in the organism, and hence they are frequently non-readily biodegradable. In consequence, their removal during conventional wastewater treatment (activated sludge (CAS)) is usually incomplete. Indeed, several studies have demonstrated that CAS treatment, despite satisfying the Council Directive 91/271/EEC requirements regarding quality of wastewater effluents prior to their discharge in the environment such as COD, BOD, TSS or NH4+, does not completely eliminate a vast majority of organic contaminants such as pharmaceuticals. Given the magnitude of the problem, the search of alternative, more efficient treatments is imperative. In particular, green, low-cost systems such as those based on microalgae have been investigated with great interest due to the high capability of microalgae to remove nutrients, heavy metals and bacteria.

The main goal would the evaluation of the removal capacity of alternative, green, low-cost and sustainable wastewater treatment systems, such as microalgae-based systems, wetlands, fungi etc to remove organic micropollutants such as personal care products or pharmaceuticals. Data obtained will be used to adapt these system’s configuration in order to obtain better eliminations. Different wastewater types (agriculture, industrial, hospital, slaughter houses, etc.) will be comprised as matrices of study. Special emphasis will be placed on (1) research studies dealing with the microalgal biomass capacity to biodegrade/bioassimilate/absorb/ adsorb these contaminants, elucidating mass balances and different removal pathways. Likewise, the capacity of different microbial communities in the microalgae systems, wetlands (filter systems) etc should also be considered; (2) consideration of metabolites and transformation products within the scope of the study should be positively valued; (3) those studies dealing with antibiotics and antibiotic resistant genes

Dr. María Jesús García-Galán
Guest Editor

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• wetlands
• microalgae
• organic micropollutants
• contaminants of emerging concern
• antibiotics
• sustainability
• circular economy