Integrating bioelectrokinetic processes for sustainable removal of persistent neonicotinoid pollutants

Removal of organic pollutants from oak leachate in pilot scale wetland systems: How efficient are aeration and vegetation treatments?

The efficiency of integrated wastewater treatment plant for pollutant removal from industrial-scale lincomycin production

4 - Removal of toxic pollutants through advanced oxidation processes

Free water surface constructed wetlands (FWSCWs) for the treatment of various wastewater types have evolved significantly over the last few decades. With an increasing need and interest in FWSCWs applications worldwide due to their cost-effectiveness and other benefits, this paper reviews recent literature on FWSCWs' ability to remove different types of pollutants such as nutrients (i.e., TN, TP, NH4-N), heavy metals (i.e., Fe, Zn, and Ni), antibiotics (i.e., oxytetracycline, ciprofloxacin, doxycycline, sulfamethazine, and ofloxacin), and pesticides (i.e., Atrazine, S-Metolachlor, imidacloprid, lambda-cyhalothrin, diuron 3,4-dichloroanilin, Simazine, and Atrazine) that may co-exist in wetland inflow, and discusses approaches for simulating hydraulic and pollutant removal processes. A bibliometric analysis of recent literature reveals that China has the highest number of publications, followed by the USA. The collected data show that FWSCWs can remove an average of 61.6%, 67.8%, 54.7%, and 72.85% of inflowing nutrients, heavy metals, antibiotics, and pesticides, respectively. Optimizing each pollutant removal process requires specific design parameters. Removing heavy metal requires the lowest hydraulic retention time (HRT) (average of 4.78days), removing pesticides requires the lowest water depth (average of 0.34m), and nutrient removal requires the largest system size. Vegetation, especially Typha spp. and Phragmites spp., play an important role in FWSCWs' system performance, making significant contributions to the removal process. Various modeling approaches (i.e., black-box and process-based) were comprehensively reviewed, revealing the need for including the internal process mechanisms related to the biological processes along with plants spp., that supported by a further research with field study validations. This work presents a state-of-the-art, systematic, and comparative discussion on the efficiency of FWSCWs in removing different pollutants, main design factors, the vegetation, and well-described models for performance prediction.

Ionic liquids in wastewater treatment: A review on pollutant removal and degradation, recovery of ionic liquids, economics and future perspectives

Environmental-benign utilisation of fly ash as low-cost adsorbents

Microalgae cultivation using wastewater is a combined process for pollutant removal and lipid production that has been widely studied in recent years. In this study, the effects of anaerobic membrane effluent (AME) and municipal wastewater (MW) ratios on microalgae growth and pollutant removal processes were investigated, and the lipid production properties were also explored. Results show that microalgae can grow in all AME/WW ratios, and a 40% AME content is the optimal condition for microalgal biomass accumulation (52.9 mg/L·d) and lipid production (0.378 g/L). Higher AME addition would inhibit microalgae growth. In addition, high ammonia (approximately 97%) and phosphate (around 90%) removal efficiencies can be achieved in all AME/WW ratio conditions, while the total nitrogen removal efficiencies decreased with the addition of AME. Total nitrogen and phosphate are the limiting factors in treating water to meet the requirements of the integrated wastewater discharge standard. This study provided a new method for anaerobic digestion and municipal wastewater treatment and also realized green energy production based on the sustainable development principles.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and emerging pollutants (EP) are characterized by their difficulty to be removed through biological oxidation processes (BOPs); they persist in the environment and could have adverse effects on the aquatic ecosystem and human health. The electro-oxidation (EO) process has been successfully used as an alternative technique to oxidize many kinds of the aforementioned pollutants in wastewater. However, the EO process has been criticized for its high energy consumption cost and its potential generation of by-products. In order to decrease these drawbacks, its combination with biological oxidation processes has been reported as a solution to reduce costs and to reach high rates of recalcitrant pollutants removal from wastewaters. Thus, the location of EO in the treatment line is an important decision to make, since this decision affects the formation of by-products and biodegradability enhancement. This paper reviews the advantages and disadvantages of EO as a pre and post-treatment in combination with BOPs. A perspective of the EO scale-up is also presented, where hydrodynamics and the relationship of A/V (area of the electrode/working volume of the electrochemical cell) experiments are examined and discussed.

A novel double metal ions-double oxidants coactivation system for NO and SO2 simultaneous removal

Integrated ozone—electrocoagulation process for the removal of pollutant from industrial effluent: Optimization through response surface methodology

This paper investigated the highway stormwater quality at two Texas cities-Austin and College Station. Two highways with high average daily traffic were monitored using passive stormwater samplers for collecting first-flush runoff during a 16-month period. Detailed traffic and weather data were collected at College Station sites, but only weather data were obtained at Austin sites. A stepwise regression analysis on College Station data identifies the antecedent dry period (ADP) as the most significant predictor of pollutant concentration. Specifically, the College Station data show an unexpected result that pollutant event mean concentrations significantly decrease with increasing ADP for all analyzed pollutants. However, the runoff concentrations observed in Austin were not significantly correlated with ADP. The result from College Station data provides a different insight to the pollutant buildup and removal process on highways. Conceptual highway pollutant buildup and removal models are proposed for generating further discussion and research interest.

This study examined the efficiency and energy considerations of advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) for the removal of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), including pharmaceuticals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and pesticides. Laboratory-scale experiments were conducted to compare the performance of different AOPs, with UV/H₂O₂, ozonation, and Fenton’s reagent being the primary techniques evaluated. The results demonstrated that UV/H₂O₂ achieved the highest degradation efficiency across all pollutant types, with removal rates of 92.3% for pharmaceuticals, 89.5% for PCBs, and 87.1% for pesticides. Fenton’s reagent showed the lowest removal rates, ranging from 70.2% to 76.3%, but required significantly lower energy input compared to UV-based processes. These findings highlighted the trade-off between degradation efficiency and operational energy demands, suggesting that treatment selection should be guided by both pollutant type and resource availability. The study further emphasized the need for hybrid treatment strategies to address the chemical resistance of certain pollutants, as well as the importance of optimizing operational parameters to reduce energy consumption. Overall, the research confirmed that AOPs remain indispensable tools for addressing contaminants resistant to conventional wastewater treatment methods. The conclusions provided insights into improving pollutant-specific removal, guiding wastewater treatment facilities, and supporting the development of sustainable water purification technologies for large-scale applications.

This volume is focused on materials and processes for the electro- and photoelectrochemical removal of biorefractory pollutants and emerging contaminants from waters to show the importance of electrochemistry and photoelectrochemistry in offering solutions to current environmental problems [...]

Electronic structure engineering of Fe/Co dual-atom catalysts enhances ultrafast Fenton-like reactions mediated by high-valent iron-oxygen-cobalt bridged complexes for safe pollutant removal.

The catalyst derived from the sulfurized Co-doped metal–organic framework (MOF) for peroxymonosulfate (PMS) activation and its application to pollutant removal