Novel Insights on Wastewater Treatment Processes for Sustainable Removal of Emerging Contaminants

Dear Colleagues,

Protecting Nature is of the utmost importance to prevent further loss of biodiversity. Conservation and restoration activities are urgently needed to protect the biodiversity of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. Emerging contaminants are among the current threats to ecosystems and human health. Major sources of this sort of pollution are the discharges from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) because the existing treatment processes do not efficiently remove emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and microplastics.

In this context, research on the characterization and evaluation of hazards, and on the development of efficient technologies for the elimination of emerging contaminants from wastewater, is essential. The development of economical and sustainable technologies is needed to promote the safe use and reuse of water. In this sense, ecotoxicity tests are a meaningful risk assessment tool to evaluate the toxicity effects of WWTP effluents and guarantee their safe discharge in the environment. Finally, methodologies such as life cycle analysis and life cycle cost analysis are very useful to assess and quantify the environmental and economic/financial viability of water management strategies.

In this Special Issue (SI), we would like to invite researchers working on emerging contaminants to share cutting-edge advances in wastewater treatments that may contribute to the sustainability and safety of wastewater treatment and reuse, and to present developing methodologies to assess ecosystem conservation and restoration. The listed keywords illustrate just a few of the many possibilities.

Dr. Olga Matos de Freitas
Prof. Dr. Marta Otero
Dr. Sónia Figueiredo
Guest Editors

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