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Application and Advanced Materials Processing in Environmental Wastes

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Materials".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 July 2022) | Viewed by 1715

Special Issue Editor

School of Environment, State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150090, China
Interests: advanced oxidation processes; nanocomposite synthesis; photocatalyst; electrochemistry; non-radical and radical processes; biochar; constructed wetland; petroleum-based plastics biodegradation; machine learning; wastewater treatment; municipal solid waste treatment

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental waste is any unnecessary resource use or release of substances into the water, land or air that could harm human health or the environment. It encompasses various types of waste, from industrial manufacturing process waste, agricultural residues and livestock waste to batteries, chemical or oil spills, air emissions and wastewater leaks. It may come in many forms, including liquids, solids, gases and sludges. As urban populations increase, the amount of waste generated grows larger. All that refuse has to go somewhere, and it often piles up in landfills or slowly leaks into soil and water. Nowadays, refuse is no longer simply considered “waste”, but rather something that must be recovered or re-used as a potential resource. A number of options have been proposed to extract useful compounds or valorize materials that have typically been sent to landfill, compost production or energy recovery. An interesting option is the development of advanced materials with different notable properties, which then become green and eco-technologies for better human life. In academic hubs, advanced materials produced from environmental waste can be used for waste product reuses, electric energy storage, water pollutant preservation, biorefineries and antiallergic materials. For example, one can directly convert the anode electrode from spent lithium-ion batteries into other functional materials, thus avoiding the separation step, which can markedly encourage the progress of the high-value utilization of spent anode materials. Lignocellulose-containing waste has been successfully recycled in biochar/carbonaceous catalyst production and used in advanced oxidation processes. In addition, it can be used as a cost-effective carbon-based absorbent to remove heavy metals or organic pollutants. Advanced materials regenerated from sugarcane bagasse and agave bagasse in food industries retain flexibility and strong mechanical properties, although the materials have higher water retention in hydrogel films. In industrial regeneration, such cellulose could be converted to the following advanced materials of carbon fibers, composites and biodegradable films. Fly ash as a raw industrial by-product was researched as a cost-effective sorbent of harmful environmental components and toxic volatile organic chemicals in both water solutions and gaseous mixtures. In addition, efforts have been made to recycle environmental waste directly. For instance, organic waste, such as food residues, plastics and biomass, has been transformed into valuable chemicals and energy via reforming. Carbon dioxide has been explored to prepare it into starch, hoping to cope with food crises.

However, only a few tons of environmental waste have been recycled till now (1.453 million tons in 2019). There are still many issues that should be further discussed: first, is environmental waste suitable for recycling in certain applications? Second, how can we reduce hazardous emissions in the recycling process of environmental waste? Third, how can we increase the recycling ratio of solid waste and lower the demands of natural sources? Fourth, how can we develop a suitable guide for waste recycling according to characteristics of different kinds of waste? All progress in these aspects will promote the development of low-carbon solid waste recycling, showing great economic and environmental benefits.

Hence, this Special Issue will focus on new techniques and strategies for treating, recycling, valuing and reusing environmental waste. It is my pleasure to invite you to submit a manuscript for this Special Issue. Full papers, communications and reviews are all welcome. 

Dr. Shanshan Yang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

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

  • waste management
  • solid waste recycling
  • nanocomposite synthesis
  • biochar/carbonaceous catalyst
  • machine learning on advanced materials processing

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 5259 KiB  
Article
Morphology, Phase and Chemical Analysis of Leachate after Bioleaching Metals from Printed Circuit Boards
by Kamila Hyra, Paweł M. Nuckowski, Joanna Willner, Tomasz Suponik, Dawid Franke, Mirosława Pawlyta, Krzysztof Matus and Waldemar Kwaśny
Materials 2022, 15(13), 4373; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/ma15134373 - 21 Jun 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1164
Abstract
The article presents the assessment of solutions and dried residues precipitated from solutions after the bioleaching process of Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) utilizing the Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans. The obtained dried residues precipitated from bioleaching solution (leachate) and control solution were tested using morphology, [...] Read more.
The article presents the assessment of solutions and dried residues precipitated from solutions after the bioleaching process of Printed Circuit Boards (PCB) utilizing the Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans. The obtained dried residues precipitated from bioleaching solution (leachate) and control solution were tested using morphology, phase, and chemical composition analysis, with particular emphasis on the assessment of crystalline and amorphous components. The analysis of the dried residues from leachate after bioleaching as well as those from the sterile control solution demonstrated a difference in the component oxidation—the leachate consisted of mainly amorphous spherical particles in diameter up to 200 nm, forming lacy aggregates. In the specimenform control solution larger particles (up to 500 nm) were observed with a hollow in the middle and crystalline outer part (probably Fe2O3, CuFeS2, and Cu2O). The X-ray diffraction phase analysis revealed that specimen obtained from leachate after bioleaching consisted mainly of an amorphous component and some content of Fe2O3 crystalline phase, while the dried residue from control solution showed more crystalline components. The share of the crystalline and amorphous components can be related to efficiency in dissolving metals during bioleaching. Obtained results of the investigation confirm the activity and participation of the A. ferrooxidans bacteria in the solubilization process of electro-waste components, with their visible degradation–acceleration of the reaction owing to a continuous regeneration of the leaching medium. The performed investigations allowed to characterize the specimen from leachate and showed that the application of complementary cross-check of the micro (SEM and S/TEM) and macro (ICP-OES and XRD) methods are of immense use for complete guidance assessment and obtained valuable data for the next stages of PCBs recycling. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Application and Advanced Materials Processing in Environmental Wastes)
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