Themed collection Recent Open Access Articles

Septage is an untapped waste stream that could be utilized for recovery of beneficial nutrients, energy, and water.

This case study underscores both the need for and the feasibility of ethical planning in environmental health research, particularly when using wastewater-based epidemiology in vulnerable communities.

Aqueous geochemistry, access to end-users, and workforce availability are important to assess lithium extraction potential from produced brines.

Managing drinking water-associated pathogens that can cause infections in immunocompromised individuals is a persistent challenge, particularly for healthcare facilities where occupant exposures carry a substantial health risk.

This article provides an ethical exploration of wastewater research surveillance, incorporating insights from data ethics, public health ethics, research ethics, and environmental and water ethics.

Recent research on antimicrobial resistance in the environment has emphasized targeted methods. Increased use of non-targeted methods is needed to determine how frequently novel resistance genes arise.

Infiltrating systems microbiology concepts in the water industry requires the development of a language of love and shared endpoints in analytical bioscience and process engineering at the (waste)water line.

Urban stormwater is a source of persistent, mobile and toxic substances, however the risk for water resources is unknown.

Harnessing phage for biological treatment is of growing interest, but an improved understanding of phage diversity, host range, lifestyle, molecular signaling, and genetic potential are needed for microbial community control.

Closing the human nutrient cycle with decentralized urine separation would help to achieve progress in food security and water protection – especially in poor countries. For this, radical innovation is needed along the whole sanitation value chain.

This review identified 30 studies from 1992–2024 that performed quantitative microbial risk assessments on potable reuse and compared individual assumptions, summarized influential parameters, and analyzed results.

The ion transportation process through a membrane was divided into 3 sequential stages, where the ion selectivity could be determined by the ion charge, hydration energy, channel size and surface chemistry.

This tutorial review synthesizes literature on sustainability analyses to introduce quantitative sustainable design (QSD) for technology research, development, and deployment.

Schematic overview of fluoxetine's molecular structure, environmental pathways, and persistence, emphasizing existing and future treatment strategies for effective removal from aquatic systems.

This review discusses trends in COF-based atmospheric water harvesting under arid conditions, from mechanistic insights to innovative designs for enhanced performance over traditional sorbents.

This review uniquely integrates performance evaluation of Fe/Mn removal media with prospects for developing multifunctional catalytic materials.

Stormwater runoff is increasingly recognized as an alternative water resource, but organic micropollutant (OMP) contamination poses challenges to its safe harvesting.

Revisiting simultaneous sulfate reduction and ammonium oxidation phenomenon: from inexplicable experimental results to extended mechanistic hypothesis.

Extensive water use leads to scarcity, adversely affecting human health, ecosystems, and resources. Life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates these impacts via damage pathways, using characterization models to quantify effects.

This review highlights the pressing need for sustainable water management strategies within the water-energy-infrastructure-human nexus, and accentuates the critical roles of infrastructure and human engagement for sustainable water management.

Traditional stormwater infrastructure facilitates the transport of antibiotic resistance genes while green stormwater infrastructure may capture the genes and promote horizontal gene transfer.

This review article focuses on metal–organic framework (MOF) composites and the impact of mixing MOFs with other materials, such as polymers, carbon-based materials, and magnetic particles, to increase their performance to remove metals from water.

Individual resource recovery processes are monitored as health risk barriers.

Homogeneous photodriven advanced oxidation processes (HP-AOPs) have been increasingly investigated in past years as a possible alternative solution to conventional tertiary treatment methods of urban wastewater.

This article has critically reviewed the story of macroscopic developments of COFs for water remediation. The various macroscopic COFs for removing toxic organic and inorganic pollutants have been systematically surveyed.

Removal of pertechnetate ⁹⁹TcO₄⁻ and perrhenate ReO₄⁻ during mineral transformation of the non-toxic basic bismuth subnitrate for subsurface remediation.

To understand community impacts and needs after the August 2023 Maui wildfires, we conducted a rapid survey-based field investigation two weeks after the incident.

A field study was carried out in Peru to remove arsenic from water in arsenic-contaminated regions using milk protein nanofibril filters. Results show that this technology can bring back water to drinking standard in both urban and rural settings.

We propose a minimum set of meta-information to accompany the reporting of SARS-CoV-2 occurrence in wastewater for improved data interpretation.

Clathrate creeping enables clean separation of salt and water in deliquescent systems, highlighting a new route for decentralized and energy-efficient water-from-air harvesting.

N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a probable human carcinogen, and other N-nitrosamines were measured in drinking water, and their relationships with standard water quality indicators were investigated.

Early-stage biofilms were grown on the inner pipe wall of PVC pipes. Clusters were observed predominantly on pipe inverts and were able to resist pipe flushing forces.

A heat snap is required for sensitive detection of rotavirus in wastewater.

Tyre wear particles in a highway stormwater system exhibited high concentrations during rain events, with further transport through the system.

As more data on virus concentrations in influent water from wastewater treatment plants becomes available, establishing best practices for measurements, monitoring, and modelling can improve the understanding of virus distributions in wastewater.

Ozone removed (psycho)pharmaceuticals slightly better than GAC. However, a risk-driven approach indicated that the expected creation of oxidative transformation products the modelled risk to the environment may actually increase after ozonation.

Artificial neural networks optimize sodium percarbonate treatment of m-cresol wastewater, achieving 67.8% TOC removal with superior accuracy over RSM.

We assessed private-well drinking water (DW) at the point of use (i.e., tapwater, TW) within a rural Nebraska community around a state-closed biofuel facility, which used pesticide-treated corn seed as feedstock for ethanol production.

By coating a nano-porous MOF, as micro-porous crystals, on a macro-porous foam, the availability of active sites for adsorption can be optimized.

Electrochemical algae harvesting achieved 99% efficiency with BDD–Al electrodes. Lipid, protein, and sugar contents were assessed, while current, pH, and electrolysis time significantly influenced efficiency and energy use.

Groundwater is a vital water source, providing drinking water to at least 50% of the world's population and accounting for 43% of water used in irrigation.

In the present study, a novel pilot ozone contactor configuration was employed using hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and multiple ozone diffusion zones in an over-under contactor to reduce bromate formation in three wastewater effluents.

Iodinated disinfection by-products (I-DBPs) are of growing concern due to their elevated toxicity compared to their chlorinated counterparts, with links to adverse health effects such as bladder cancer and miscarriages.

This study models combined primary and return activated sludge fermentation, highlighting anaerobic hydrolysis rate, hydrogen yield, and methanogenic growth. Higher primary sludge content boosts fermentation, assessed with two hydrolysis models.

Resource recovery potential of chars produced from faecal sludge and biomass waste, in Kampala, Uganda. Comparison with fundamental properties of excreta-derived chars allows the quantification of optimisation pathways via source control.

PINN improves water quality prediction with partial data and imperfect chemical model.

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) resist degradation, posing health and environmental risks. Photocatalytic membrane reactors offer efficient POP breakdown and easy catalyst recovery, enabling safe, reusable water for agriculture and beyond.

The pollution of the environment with explosives and their decomposition products, particularly resulting from armed conflicts and intensive mining activities, poses a serious problem nowadays.

Foam fractionation with cationic surfactants addition can rapidly remove both long-chain and short-chain PFAS from water.

The modification of constructed wetlands with biochar, zeolite and activated carbon considerably enhances the removal of bulk organics, nutrients and heavy metals.

This study introduces a simple and rapid multi-wavelength, semi-quantitative detection strategy for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 and MS2 bacteriophage in water and wastewater using reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP).

This study reveals twice the microbial diversity in well vs. municipal waters, highlighting the need for improved private well monitoring.

Defect engineering has emerged as a versatile approach for tailoring the properties of materials to meet specific functional applications and improve their properties.

In the present study, a novel and economical adsorbent was synthesized from a coal fly ash–chitosan composite to remove Pb²⁺ and Cr⁶⁺ from aqueous solutions.

This study investigates the removal of miconazole, a widely used pharmaceutical, from water using the electro-Fenton process.

Psychopharmaceuticals are an emerging group of hazardous contaminants that pose a risk to the aquatic environment.

A continuous-flow DBD plasma reactor was used for carbamazepine degradation in an aqueous solution, with >90% degradation achieved under optimal conditions, surpassing UV-based AOPs in efficiency and energy cost.

TCE removal by adjusting bi-functional microbes in the joint H₂/O₂ system.

Bioremediation of wastewater from the nuclear industry in a 3-phase aerobic airlift system and fluidized-bed anaerobic reactor with floating microbiological carriers.

Despite effluent microbiome differences, contaminant of emerging concern signatures were consistent and similar in wastewater effluent treated by membrane bioreactor and oxidation ditch, indicating high-quality effluent from both treatment types.

Wavelet-based filtering combined with PCA effectively denoises data. The KD-driven method offers a reliable metric for detecting deviations from normal conditions without needing labelled data, making it suitable for anomaly detection.

This study employs a data-driven personalized federated learning-based multi-agent attention deep reinforcement learning algorithm to address the intake scheduling problem of three water intake pumping stations in urban water treatment plants.

Marble processing industry wastewater contains a high amount of particulate solids. These wastewaters can be treated with high solid removal efficiency in flotation systems where pyrolysis oil is used as a collector.

A new technology using a high-rate contact stabilization process for wastewater treatment demonstrated superior energy recovery compared to an existing process, even while taking seasonal variations into account.

Two photo-sequencing batch reactors (PSBR) fed with real wastewater were evaluated to understand the elimination and particle association of fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) and coliphages.

Drying biosolids in a full-scale dryer and lab-scale oven reduces measureable PFAS concentrations in biosolids.

Disparities exist for marginalized populations (i.e., low-income populations) when it comes to potential exposure to elevated nitrate in drinking water.

Hydrogenotrophic denitrification driven by granular sludge is an eco-friendly alternative to conventional separation-based techniques, which ensure process stability, high NO₃⁻ removal efficiency and minimal greenhouse gas emissions.

Removal of U(VI) in oxic groundwaters through the formation of low solubility U(VI) phosphate (bio)minerals, expanding the treatment envelope for in situ biomineralisation technologies.

Excessive accumulation of particulate material and biofilms on the inner walls of drinking water pipes increases the risk of water discoloration events, known to be the major cause of customer complaints worldwide.