Search Results (2,846)

Nanomaterials have emerged as key platforms for environmental remediation owing to their tunable surface chemistry, high specific surface area, and multifunctional physicochemical properties. This review provides a critical comparison between conventional nanomaterials (CNMs) and phyto-mediated nanomaterials (PMNs), with particular emphasis on material design, surface chemistry, pollutant removal mechanisms, environmental performance, and sustainability. CNMs, including metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, carbon-based nanomaterials, and hybrid nanocomposites, offer excellent adsorption, photocatalytic, redox, and antimicrobial performance but remain constrained by concerns regarding toxicity, environmental persistence, and energy-intensive synthesis. PMNs provide a greener alternative by integrating plant-derived surface chemistry with nanomaterial functionality, potentially reducing reliance on hazardous synthesis reagents while modifying interfacial interactions relevant to environmental remediation. The review critically discusses the mechanistic roles of adsorption, surface complexation, photocatalytic degradation, electron-transfer processes, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in pollutant removal. Recent advances in water purification, soil and groundwater remediation, carbon sequestration, and climate-related environmental applications are comprehensively summarized. Finally, current challenges associated with reproducibility, scalability, environmental safety, life-cycle assessment, and regulatory considerations are critically analyzed, together with future perspectives toward the rational design of sustainable nanomaterials for next-generation environmental remediation technologies. Full article

Multi-modal synthetic aperture radar (SAR)–optical object detectors raise detection accuracy by fusing complementary physical responses, but require both modalities to be simultaneously available at inference. When the optical stream becomes unavailable—under heavy cloud cover, night-time conditions, or downlink disruption—the detector reverts to SAR-only operation and accuracy degrades sharply. A natural remedy is to distil a multi-modal teacher into a SAR-only student via privileged-information knowledge distillation. However, we observe that the leading channel-wise feature-level method (CWD) reduces the student’s accuracy below the non-distilled baseline, with its smallest-target AP collapsing to near zero, because SAR speckle and target high-frequency edges share the same band and the alignment loss is dominated by broadband speckle energy. We refer to this failure mode as the speckle-fitting trap, formalize it as a gradient-pollution effect, and validate it through spectral and feature-manifold diagnostics. To counter the trap, we propose M-FSAD-KD, a full-link distillation framework whose neck-stage Fourier-gated alignment transfers low-frequency structural content while preserving target-edge high-frequency content; a joint spatial–channel attention mask, a shallow backbone adapter, and a response-level knowledge distillation (KD) term complete the chain. With a MAIENet teacher on OGSOD-1.0, the advantage of M-FSAD-KD over the strongest response-level KD baseline scales with student capacity: it matches KD on a 2.39 M-parameter student (both ≈48% mean average precision at an intersection-over-union (IoU) threshold of 0.5 (${\mathrm{mAP}}_{50}$), averaged over multiple seeds) and exceeds it by 2.0 absolute points on a 19.98 M-parameter student ($+8$ over the non-distilled baseline), where it is the best of all distillation methods; at full convergence the 19.98 M-parameter student reaches 81.9% ${\mathrm{mAP}}_{50}$, within 8.9 absolute points of the multi-modal teacher. A frozen-feature transfer test to an out-of-domain SAR benchmark (SSDD ship detection) further shows that distilling from the multi-modal teacher yields substantially more transferable SAR features—about ten absolute points above the non-distilled backbone—with M-FSAD-KD transferring best. Cross-architecture validation with a dual-stream DEYOLO teacher yields 48.6% ${\mathrm{mAP}}_{50}$ at the student—1.1 absolute points below the MAIENet result—indicating that the framework transfers across the two representative teacher architectures tested (single-stream and dual-stream). Full article

Antimony (Sb) is an emerging environmental pollutant due to its toxicity, persistence, and extensive industrial applications. Despite the growing need for sustainable remediation strategies, research on the potential of phytoremediation for Sb-contaminated soils remains limited. This study investigates the suitability of Cynara cardunculus (cardoon), a high-biomass bioenergy crop, for the remediation of Sb-polluted soils and evaluates the effect of Fe(II) supplementation on plant performance and Sb behavior. Pot experiments were conducted using soils amended with 10–40 mg Sb kg⁻¹, under treatments with and without Fe(II). In the absence of iron, cardoon showed high tolerance to Sb exposure, with no significant growth inhibition even at 40 mg Sb kg⁻¹ after 30 days of cultivation. Iron addition significantly enhanced plant growth, resulting in a 2.3-fold increase in aboveground biomass compared with non-amended soils under the 20 mg Sb kg⁻¹ treatment after 45 days of cultivation. Sb accumulation was mainly restricted to the root system, indicating limited phytoextraction capacity. However, the species demonstrated strong phytostabilization potential, as the presence of plants reduced the water-soluble Sb fraction in soil by up to 50% compared with unplanted controls. These results suggest that C. cardunculus is a promising candidate for phytostabilization of Sb-contaminated soils. Its combined use with iron amendments may enhance biomass production and support integrated soil remediation and bioenergy production strategies. Full article

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is a heterogeneous carrier of toxic metals whose environmental fate and biological effects depend on particle size, source-related composition, chemical form, solubility, and bioaccessibility. Lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and nickel (Ni) are of particular concern because atmospheric transport and deposition connect air pollution with persistent contamination of soils, vegetation, waters, sediments, food, and feed, followed by human and animal exposure. This review integrates evidence across a source-to-effect continuum encompassing emission, atmospheric transport, deposition, post-depositional redistribution, food-chain transfer, bioaccessibility, toxicokinetics, molecular toxicity, biomonitoring, remediation, and predictive assessment. Total PM mass and total metal concentration do not adequately represent biologically effective exposure, which is additionally determined by respiratory deposition, gastrointestinal release, dissolution kinetics, absorption, tissue distribution, intracellular retention, and interactions with co-associated constituents. Pb, Cd, and Ni share downstream effects including oxidative imbalance, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, DNA damage, impaired genome maintenance, epigenetic remodeling, and cytogenetic abnormalities, but differ in environmental mobility, persistence, target-organ distribution, and molecular mechanisms. Effective risk assessment therefore requires coordinated multi-matrix monitoring, distinction between total and biologically accessible fractions, pathway-specific remediation, and appropriately validated predictive models. An integrated One Health framework can improve identification of priority matrices, exposure pathways, and risk-reduction measures. Full article

Skatole is a harmful, odorous pollutant in livestock manure. Skatole-degrading strains are mostly harmful Gram-negative bacteria, whereas safe Gram-positive strains demonstrate poor degradation performance, limiting bioremediation applications. To solve this problem, this study was conducted to enhance the skatole degradation capacity of the food-grade strain Lactococcus lactis NZ9000 via heterologous expression of the skatole-degrading Ska enzyme from Acinetobacter piscicola p38. Three gene sequences, designated Ska-Y (original sequence from A. piscicola p38), Ska-D (E. coli codon-optimized), and Ska-R (L. lactis codon-optimized), were separately expressed using constitutive pMG36e and nisin-inducible pNZ8148 plasmids. The constitutive system only transcribed mRNA but produced misfolded, nonfunctional inclusion bodies. By contrast, the codon-optimized pNZ8148-Ska-R strain exhibited prominent skatole degradation ability, even under non-inductive conditions. Under optimal conditions (30 ℃, ultra-low nisin induction), the engineered strain increased the 24 h degradation rate of 50 mg/L skatole from 20% to 88% and completely degraded 25 mg/L skatole. Field tests verified that the strain effectively reduced skatole accumulation in manure compost and lagoon manure. This study achieved efficient functional heterologous expression in Gram-positive bacteria, provides new insights into ultra-low-dose induction and codon optimization, and offers a safe and efficient microbial agent for livestock manure odor remediation. Full article

Existing DNAPL groundwater source inversion approaches are confronted with prominent bottlenecks: shallow surrogate models often fail to capture strong nonlinear multiphase flow relationships, traditional heuristic optimizers suffer from premature convergence, and ill-posed equifinality further degrades inversion reliability, together with prohibitive computational costs from repeated multiphase numerical simulation. Taking a typical chemical-contaminated site in Northeast China as the research object, this study establishes a multiphase flow numerical model that fully reproduces the migration and transformation mechanisms of chlorobenzene-based DNAPLs after systematic generalization of the site’s geological and hydrogeological conditions. To drastically cut the computational burden incurred during iterative inversion, high-quality datasets are generated via parameter sensitivity analysis and Latin hypercube sampling, based on which a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN)-driven high-fidelity surrogate model is constructed and embedded into the optimization framework as an equality constraint. A separated nonlinear programming model is formulated to independently quantify pollution source characteristics and hydrogeological parameters, with the objective of minimizing the residual error between field-measured and numerically simulated contaminant concentrations. A hybrid homotopy-particle swarm optimization (HH-PSO) algorithm is further proposed to address the limitations of conventional optimizers, including strong dependence on initial guesses and susceptibility to local optima. On this basis, a closed-loop feedback iteration scheme is developed, where source identification and parameter calibration are implemented alternately with bidirectional constraints and progressive correction to continuously refine and stabilize inversion outputs. This work presents distinct innovations in the methodology, algorithm, and practical application of DNAPL groundwater source inversion. Results from synthetic benchmark cases and on-site field applications demonstrate that the DCNN surrogate model achieves far higher fitting accuracy than shallow learning approaches (e.g., Kriging and support vector regression), with the coefficient of determination R² exceeding 0.99. After the feedback correction iteration procedure, the average relative error for retrieved source locations, release histories, and hydrogeological parameters drops to 3.72%, and the overall computational efficiency is elevated by approximately 99.84%. The integrated simulation–optimization inversion framework proposed in this work integrates monitoring signal denoising, multiphase numerical simulation, deep learning surrogate modeling, hybrid intelligent optimization, and feedback iterative correction. This integrated system effectively resolves core technical bottlenecks in DNAPL groundwater source inversion, such as nonlinear ill-posedness, equifinality induced by mutual interference between source terms and aquifer parameters, prohibitive computational costs of multiphase simulations, and premature convergence of traditional optimization algorithms. The established framework can serve as a robust theoretical foundation and technical tool for rapid, precise source tracing, pollution liability confirmation, and remediation design at complex contaminated sites. Full article

Pharmaceutical compounds, emerging medicinal residues, and personal care products (PPCPs) are ubiquitous in aquatic environments and are causing a serious global environmental problem because of their persistence, bioaccumulation, and harmful effects on the environment and human health. Conventional wastewater treatment technologies are sometimes not capable of removing them completely, causing persistent releases of biologically active micropollutants to surface water, groundwater, and drinking water systems. In this context, biomass-derived catalysts are a promising class of advanced materials for environmental remediation because of their sustainable and cost-efficient nature. The catalysts are composed of bio-residues, such as agricultural residues, forestry wastes, and other bioresources, that have tunable surface chemistry, high porosity, and can be activated and functionalized to increase their catalytic activity. This review summarizes recent advances in biomass-derived catalysts for the removal of pharmaceuticals and PPCPs from water. Special attention is given to synthesis methods, such as pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonization, chemical activation, heteroatom doping, and metal or metal-oxide hybridization. The catalytic mechanisms of pollutant degradation, including adsorption, radical-based advanced oxidation processes, and non-radical electron-transfer mechanisms, are critically discussed. Moreover, the effect of key operating parameters, catalyst stability, and real wastewater test performance are studied. Sustainability aspects such as green synthesis routes, integration of circular bioeconomy, and life-cycle aspects are also emphasized. Finally, current issues like catalyst deactivation, scaling-up, and the lack of a full mechanistic understanding are identified, and future research avenues are suggested to enable the implementation of efficient, durable, and environmentally friendly catalytic systems for large-scale wastewater treatment applications. Full article

Contaminated soil remediation is of increasing importance due to the environmental and health risks associated with hazardous pollutants. Solidification/stabilization (S/S) is a widely adopted remediation technique; however, its environmental performance is often limited by the high demand for Portland cement. This study evaluates the environmental impacts of a conventional cement-based S/S system and an alternative formulation incorporating ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS), washed fly ash (W-FA), and marble sludge (MS) using a comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The assessment was performed using SimaPro 9.3, the Ecoinvent v3.9 database, and the ReCiPe 2016 Midpoint (H) method, within a cradle-to-gate system boundary. Particular attention was given to developing a transparent and reproducible life cycle inventory, integrating primary operational data with background datasets for all material and energy flows associated with the remediation process. The results show that replacing a substantial portion of Portland cement with industrial by-products reduces Global Warming Potential by approximately 27%, while smaller reductions of approximately 20% are observed for ozone formation, human health and ozone formation, and terrestrial ecosystems, respectively. Conversely, the Green S/S formulation shows higher impacts across most of the remaining midpoint categories, including ionizing radiation; terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecotoxicity; human toxicity; eutrophication; resource scarcity and water consumption. These increases reflect upstream elementary flows and processing requirements associated with the alternative binder constituents included within the adopted cradle-to-gate system boundary. Overall, the results demonstrate that the environmental performance of the alternative formulation is characterized by clear category-specific trade-offs rather than a uniform reduction across impact categories. The findings highlight the potential of industrial by-products to reduce cement-related climate impacts while emphasizing the need for a multi-impact life-cycle perspective when evaluating alternative S/S formulations for contaminated soil remediation. Full article

Nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) exhibits great potential in the field of organic pollutant remediation due to its strong reducibility, high specific surface area and unique core–shell structure. However, pristine nZVI has inherent drawbacks including severe particle aggregation, surface passivation and poor electron selectivity, which greatly restrict its practical remediation performance. To improve the reactivity of nZVI, researchers have developed multiple modification approaches that significantly improve the dispersibility, stability and reactivity of nZVI. This review summarizes the main nZVI modification strategies, including metal modification, surface coating, carrier loading, sulfidation modification and biological integration. The advantages and limitations of each modification method are compared. Furthermore, the underlying removal mechanisms of modified nZVI toward typical organic pollutants are elaborated, covering direct reduction, advanced oxidation and synergistic degradation pathways. Key factors governing the degradation efficiency of modified nZVI are subsequently analyzed. Finally, existing bottlenecks for practical implementation and future research perspectives are proposed. Full article

With advancements in DNA nanotechnology, the role of DNA has expanded far beyond its traditional function as genetic material, and it is now increasingly utilized as a programmable material distinguished by specific molecular recognition and controllable self-assembly. As contemporary environmental pollutants become increasingly complex, conventional remediation technologies often face critical limitations due to their poor selectivity and low adaptability. Consequently, DNA nanotechnology presents a promising alternative for intelligent remediation. Specifically, functional nanostructures such as aptamers, DNAzymes, hydrogels, and hybrid nanocomposites serve as innovative platforms for the highly selective sequestration, degradation, and isolation of diverse contaminants. This review summarizes the fundamental properties of DNA relevant to environmental remediation, including molecular recognition and catalytic activity, while also exploring underutilized functions with potential for future remediation applications, such as enzyme-free amplification and stimulus-responsive structural transitions. We further discuss diverse DNA-based material platforms and systematically examine reported remediation strategies across major classes of environmental pollutants, with particular emphasis on aqueous systems, which currently represent the primary context of experimentally demonstrated DNA-based pollutant removal and degradation. Beyond these demonstrated strategies, we also explore emerging DNA-based concepts with potential for future remediation applications, particularly through the expansion of DNA functionalities, integration with advanced material platforms, and extension to new classes of target pollutants. Finally, we discuss the key challenges associated with practical environmental translation, providing an integrated perspective on both the current landscape and future development of DNA-based remediation technologies. Full article

Plastic pollution continues to threaten marine ecosystems and undermine efforts toward a circular economy. This study systematically maps global research on the three core waste management strategies, i.e., reduce, recycle, and remove (3R’s), to understand their intellectual structure, evolution, and emerging directions. Using both Scopus and the Web of Science, we apply bibliometric performance analysis and keyword co-occurrence network mapping to examine trends across plastic bans and regulation, recycling technologies, and clean-up initiatives. Research on reduction has increasingly incorporated themes related to multi-level governance and circular economy frameworks, based on observed changes in keyword patterns and thematic evolution. Recycling studies show an increasing presence of themes related to advanced chemical, biological, and AI-supported systems alongside established mechanical recycling approaches. Clean-up research increasingly includes themes related to technology-driven solutions, including improved detection and remediation approaches. Despite this progress, key challenges remain such as fragmented policy coordination, technological and economic limits to scaling advanced recycling, and the high cost and complexity of large-scale clean-up. Life-cycle trade-offs and persistent microplastics further constrain impact. Overall, future research must connect prevention, material recovery, and environmental restoration within coherent governance and technological systems to reduce plastic leakage and support long-term marine sustainability. Full article

Green nanotechnology is now well established, showcasing how natural precursors can replace hazardous synthesis routes. This review analyzes the diverse biotechnological applications of biogenic nanomaterials. In the biomedical field, they have demonstrated significant efficacy as antimicrobial agents, targeted drug delivery vehicles, wound healers, and theragnostic platforms. They also enhance food packaging security, optimize nano-fertilizers, and control insect pests. Additionally, their unique surface properties and catalytic activity make them key candidates for pollutant remediation and advanced chemical sensors. Ultimately, while green nanoparticles offer clear advantages over traditional chemical methods, key bottlenecks, like batch-to-batch reproducibility, industrial scalability, and long-term ecotoxicological and multigenerational impacts, still need to be addressed. Full article

Salinisation and metal contamination are among the leading causes of arable land loss worldwide, yet halophytes and metallophytes—the plants best adapted to these conditions—remain a considerably underexploited biotechnological resource. Using an eco-evo-devo perspective, in which environmental pressure, developmental plasticity and evolutionary outcome interact to shape adaptive traits, we examine evidence that salinity and metal tolerance arose independently and repeatedly across distant angiosperm lineages, converging on comparable structural and physiological solutions: succulence, anatomical transport barriers, root exudation, osmoprotection, and ion compartmentalisation. This convergence distinguishes stress-tolerance mechanisms that are general from those that are stressor-specific, informing efforts to transfer these traits into other extremophytes and conventional crops. In turn, we assess the ecological roles of halophytes and metallophytes in their natural habitats before evaluating their biotechnological applications, which range from halophyte-derived genes and promoters for crop improvement to halophyte biomass for bioenergy, biomaterials and remediation of saline, polluted soils and wastewaters, while metallophytes underpin phytoremediation, phytomining, and biomonitoring of metal-contaminated sites. Notwithstanding this progress, wider exploitation remains limited by the scarcity of crop-relevant gene-editing platforms for halophytes, low biomass yield in metal-hyperaccumulating species, and inconsistent phytochemical standardisation across growing conditions, as well as by three unresolved gaps: the lack of methods to partition host and microbiome contributions to tolerance, uncertainty over whether mechanisms shared between the two groups are convergent or evolutionarily conserved, and the undetermined contribution of epigenetic inheritance to stress adaptation. Translating this evolutionary and physiological knowledge into stress-adapted cultivars, optimised extraction systems, and field-ready phytoremediation and phytomining programmes is central to addressing land degradation, food security, and sustainable resource recovery. Full article

Over the past decade, microplastic pollution has emerged as a subject of considerable interest and extensive research, with implications for human health and ecosystems. This paper briefly summarized the sources of microplastics and their distribution in the soil. It comprehensively addressed the effects of microplastics on the soil–plant system, including the impacts on soil physicochemical properties and plant rhizosphere microbial communities. The effects of microplastics on plant growth, along with their transformation and accumulation within plants, were evaluated. Microplastics can adhere to soil particles and root surfaces and, under certain conditions, may associate with outer root tissues or enter plants through damaged or vulnerable sites. Their presence in the soil–plant system may interfere with water and nutrient uptake, affect photosynthesis, and induce cytotoxic or genotoxic responses. Furthermore, the co-occurrence of microplastics with toxic substances or soil remediation materials may exacerbate the adverse effects on plants and ecosystems. Future research should focus on the development of methods for detecting microplastics in soils and plants and investigate the interactions between microplastics and other environmental factors within the soil–plant system. Further investigation is required regarding the role of microplastics in hyperaccumulating plants, particularly concerning plant-based methods for removing heavy metal pollutants. This study establishes a scientific basis for understanding the effects of microplastics on soil–plant systems. Full article

Spent coffee grounds (SCGs), a ubiquitous and renewable agricultural waste, have emerged as a promising biosorbent for environmental remediation. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the application of SCG-derived materials in wastewater treatment and gas purification. We systematically summarize their physicochemical characteristics, adsorption performance towards diverse contaminants, and underlying mechanisms. Specifically, modification strategies of raw SCGs are discussed in detail, including chemical modifications (e.g., degreasing/alkali/acid/organic solvent/metal oxide treatment), thermochemical conversions (e.g., pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonization, and activation), and the fabrication of composites with natural or synthetic materials such as chitosan, clay minerals, and agricultural/industrial wastes. These approaches effectively optimize pore structure, enrich surface functionalities, and enhance selectivity and adsorption capacity. Particular attention is devoted to SCG-derived activated carbon and composites for capturing gaseous pollutants (e.g., CO₂, H₂S, PH₃, and VOCs). Techno-economic analysis of SCG-derived materials production is discussed to evaluate their commercial viability and overall sustainability. Finally, critical research gaps are identified, and future perspectives are proposed, emphasizing the elucidation of adsorption mechanisms, rational material design, and rigorous techno-economic and life-cycle assessments. This review underscores the potential of SCG-based materials as low-cost, high-performance alternatives to conventional adsorbents, aligning with the principles of a circular economy and environmental sustainability. Full article