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Toxicity Assessment and Remediation of Industrial Wastewater

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Chemical Engineering and Technology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 January 2022) | Viewed by 6327

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. María Dolores Víctor Ortega

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Guest Editor

High School of Engineering and Technology, International University of La Rioja, Logroño, Spain
Interests: wastewater remediation; ion exchange; membrane technology; agricultural waste revalorization; electrochemical advanced processes

Dr. Ana Sofia dos Santos Fajardo

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Assistant Guest Editor

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Sorbonne Université, (France) and School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment - Arizona State University (USA)
Interests: water/wastewater treatments; electrochemical advanced processes; electrocoagulation; electrochemical oxidation; electro-Fenton; photoelectro-Fenton; solar photoelectro-Fenton; electrochemical reduction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental protection is one of the main issues in our current society. In this line, industrial wastewaters play an important role because of the large amounts of these effluents generated annually. Furthermore, industrial effluents are subjected to strict environmental legislation, which will become more stringent in virtue of several international cooperation projects involved in environmental protection, such as ‘H2020 Horizon’. For these reasons, adequate management of industrial wastewaters is a key issue, and conventional pollution prevention strategies become necessary. In this scenario, there are a plethora of technologies described in the scientific literature regarding wastewater treatments. Concretely, current methods for wastewater purification include precipitation, coagulation/flocculation, sedimentation, flotation, filtration, membrane processes, electrochemical techniques, ion exchange, biological processes, and chemical reactions, among others. Nevertheless, most of these techniques imply some disadvantages and limitations such as secondary pollution, complicated treatment processes, high cost, and energy consumption.

On the other hand, it is crucial to identify the main pollutants present in industrial wastewater, which depend on the developed industrial activity. Therefore, chemical analyses of environmental samples for priority pollutants should be performed followed by data assimilation. In addition, the results of chemical analyses may be interpreted based on ecological or human health risk assessments.

Finally, it is worth considering that some of these pollutants could become high-added-value products as in the case of phenolic compounds, which are present in several industrial wastewaters such as potential contaminants.

Our aim is to encourage scientists to publish their experimental and theoretical research relating to promising industrial wastewaters treatment technologies. Taking into account the great variety of industrial effluents and the available remediation technologies, this Special Issue is a good opportunity to have an overview of different applications of these technologies for environmental protection.

Any topics within the scope of the journal will be considered, especially those that represent state-of-the-art development in quantifying potential pollutants derived from industrial wastewater and novel treatment technologies for environmental remediation. Papers addressing the following topics with a discussion on the relationship to environmental sustainability are especially welcome:

Novel purification technologies for environmental remediation;
Desalination to mitigate the impact of climate change;
Energy reduction and recovery;
Desalination by renewable energy;
Integration of wastewater purification with water reuse;
Sustainable/environmentally friendly effluent treatments processes;
Life/cost cycle assessment.

Prof. Dr. Maria Dolores Víctor-Ortega
Dr. Ana Sofia dos Santos Fajardo
Guest Editors

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. Sustainability 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 2400 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

Industrial wastewater
purification technologies
effluent remediation
advanced oxidation processes
membrane technology
ion exchange
adsorption process
biological processes

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 1143 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Combined Electrocoagulation and Physicochemical Treatment of Cork Boiling Wastewater

by Carolina Vicente, João R. Silva, Andreia D. Santos, Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira and Luis M. Castro

Sustainability 2022, 14(7), 3727; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14073727 - 22 Mar 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1579

Abstract

Cork boiling wastewater (CBW) is a highly polluted and difficult to treat effluent resultant from the cork manufacturing industry. This study aims to evaluate a new, reliable, efficient, and sustainable process to treat this effluent. This paper tested electrocoagulation as a pre- and post-treatment to improve the already existing physicochemical treatment in a cork production facility in Portugal. In the physicochemical procedures (PC), the addition of different volumes of coagulant (ferric chloride (III) 40% w/w), neutralizer (sodium hydroxide, 32% w/w), and flocculant (polyacrylamide, 0.2 g/L) were evaluated. Electrocoagulation (EC) was performed in a bench-scale reactor, using aluminum and stainless-steel electrodes. For EC, different initial pH, current density, and current tension values were tested. When electrocoagulation was used as a post-treatment, better performances were achieved. However, treatment costs were increased significantly. Coagulation/flocculation offers a viable and cheap treatment, achieving removal efficiencies of 88.2%, 81.0%, 76.9%, and 94.2% for total chemical oxygen demand (tCOD), total carbon (TC), total nitrogen (TN), and soluble chemical oxygen demand (sCOD), respectively. With a PC-EC combination, it is possible to achieve removal efficiencies of 92.4%, 88.0%, 91.4%, and 91.4% for tCOD, TC, TN, and sCOD, respectively. The increased TN removal efficiency can translate into great benefits for certain discharge conditions and should be taken into consideration for improving the sustainability of cork industry. On the other hand, when EC is used as a pre-treatment, there are no benefits either in terms of treatment performance or operating costs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toxicity Assessment and Remediation of Industrial Wastewater)

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9 pages, 1310 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

Sustainable Development: Use of Agricultural Waste Materials for Vanillic Acid Recovery from Wastewater

by María Dolores Víctor-Ortega, Ana S. Fajardo and Diego Airado-Rodríguez

Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2818; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14052818 - 28 Feb 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1611

Abstract

The management of agricultural waste is an important issue related to environment protection, as the inappropriate disposal of this waste yields negative effects on the environment. Proper management of industrial effluents is totally aligned with sustainable development goal (SDG) number six “clean water and sanitation”, as well as partially related to other several SDG. In this work, two agricultural waste materials were used for vanillic acid recovery from wastewater. In this scenario, vanillic acid could be considered as both an organic pollutant present in several industrial effluents and a high added-value product when isolated. Therefore, its removal from wastewaters, as well as its recovery and isolation, are very interesting from environmental and economical points of view. Peanut and pistachio shells were studied as no-cost and readily accessible potential adsorbents for the removal and recovery of vanillic acid from aqueous solutions. The evolution of equilibrium isotherms of vanillic acid on both biosorbents was investigated. Three isotherm models (Langmuir, Freundlich, and Temkin) were tested to fit the experimental equilibrium data and compared. The Langmuir model provided the best correlation for vanillic acid biosorption onto both peanut and pistachio shells. Finally, the negative values of ΔG indicated that the biosorption process was spontaneous and thermodynamically favorable for both agricultural waste materials. Accordingly, peanut and pistachio shells were shown to be very efficient low-cost adsorbents, and a promising alternative for vanillic acid recovery from industrial wastewaters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toxicity Assessment and Remediation of Industrial Wastewater)

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14 pages, 2655 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

A Comparison of Biosolids Production and System Efficiency between Activated Sludge, Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor, and Sequencing Batch Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor in the Dairy Wastewater Treatment

by Rui Boavida-Dias, João R. Silva, Andreia D. Santos, Rui C. Martins, Luis M. Castro and Rosa M. Quinta-Ferreira

Sustainability 2022, 14(5), 2702; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su14052702 - 25 Feb 2022

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 2525

Abstract

Dairy industry wastewater is rich in organic content, presenting a high biodegradability, and therefore biological treatments are widely employed. This study aimed to evaluate biosolids production in three systems: activated sludge (AS), movingbed biofilm reactor (MBBR), and sequencingbatch movingbed biofilm reactor (SBMBBR). Simulated dairy wastewater was used at different organic load rates (OLRs): 1.22, 2.87, and 5.44 g_COD L⁻¹d⁻¹. Besides biosolids production, COD, total carbon (TC), and total nitrogen (TN) removal efficiency was evaluated. Biosolids production was measured in the mixed liquor, carrier-adhered biomass, treated wastewater, and surplus sludge. The operational conditions were kept similar for the three systems, with a carrier filling ratio of 50% for MBBR and SBMBBR. The SBMBBR proved to have better performance in the removal efficiencies of COD, TC, and TN for all OLRs studied. The MBBR presented a similar COD and TC removal efficiency as the SBBR for the two highest OLRs (2.87 and 5.44 g_COD L⁻¹d⁻¹). Concerning biosolids production, the MBBR system produced less biomass and delivered the lowest amount of adhered biomass inside the carriers. The AS treatment generated the highest amount of sludge and offered the worst treatment capability for all OLRs evaluated. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Toxicity Assessment and Remediation of Industrial Wastewater)

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