Dear Colleagues,

Wastewaters generated from different human activities contain persistent, difficult-to-degrade pollutants. These pollutants have a complex molecular structure and are potentially toxic to microbial growth and thus have varying degrees of biodegradability in conventional treatment processes. The wastewater medium could also be challenging due to the presence of high salinity and other inhibitors, which reduce the biological activity of microorganisms, resulting in lower biodegradation rates. Additionally, persistent pollutants biodegrade partially during wastewater treatment, and their transformation products can be more toxic, more resistant, and more cost-expensive to biodegrade further compared to parent compounds. Biodegradation of persistent organic pollutant under such suboptimal conditions poses a serious problem as complex molecules require specialized microbial consortia for the biodegradation of the target molecules. Under toxic conditions, these microbial consortia are usually washed out of the reactors due to poor settling, which results in low removal rates, low reactor loading rates, process instability, and thus a need for larger reactor capacities.

This Special Issue is open to papers advancing the field or showing innovative applications in wastewater treatment and reuse. We welcome papers that improve the efficiency and stability of the biodegradation of persistent pollutants and their transformation products, microbial consortia thriving under inhibitory conditions, and the performance and loading rates of wastewater treatment plants under inevitable, persistent pollutant threats. We are also interested in papers that provide new insights into the biodegradation of persistent pollutants in other parts of the urban water cycle, such as runoff and rivers, monitoring of persistent pollutants, assessment of wastewater footprints, and adaptation technologies to the holistic urban wastewater system for enhancing persistent pollutant removal capacity.

Prof. Dr. Dafang Fu
Dr. Ioannis Fotidis
Dr. Junyu Zhang
Guest Editors

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