Environmental technologies for the sustainable development of the water and energy sectors

Did you know that watching your favourite series on tv or just switching on your laptop for work, requires indirect water consumption? It’s a proven fact that every time we use energy resources, water is also consumed. In the next few decades, global water and energy demands will increase significantly, but at this time there isn’t a lot of information on expected global changes.

The Water Research Institute (WRI) estimates that around 33 countries will experience very high water stress by 2040. Which means that as water scarcity rises due to rapid population growth, climate change and water deterioration, the global demand for pure water will also increase. We hope this book will help answer some of the challenges.

The 13 chapters of this book were selected from multiple disciplines which focused on the state-of-the-art technologies in the field of environmental applications. These include technical-economic aspects of chemical precipitation; different substrates and concentrations of double chamber microbial fuel cells; the impact of pre-treatment on COD from paper industry wastewater; the synthesis of PES/Go-SiO2 mixed matrix membranes; predictions of a wastewater treatment plants performance of aeration demands; the performance of hydrological models for green roofs; short-term flexibility for energy grids from wastewater treatment plants; an integrated platform between water-energy-nexus and a business model for sustainable development; resilience-informed decision making in critical infrastructure networks.

In Focus – a book series that showcases the latest accomplishments in water research. Each book focuses on a specialist area with papers from top experts in the field. It aims to be a vehicle for in-depth understanding and inspire further conversations in the sector.

Editorial: Environmental technologies for the sustainable development of the water and energy sectors

Shadi Wajih Hasan, Haizhou Liu, Vincenzo Naddeo, Sebastià Puig and Ngai Yin Yip

Technical-economic comparison of chemical precipitation and ion exchange processes for the removal of phosphorus from wastewater

Agostina Chiavola, Simona Bongirolami and Giorgia Di Francesco

Effect of substrate type and concentration on the performance of a double chamber microbial fuel cell

Zia Ullah and Sheikh Zeshan

Cost-effective removal of COD in the pre-treatment of wastewater from the paper industry

Joanna Boguniewicz-Zablocka, Iwona Klosok-Bazan, Vincenzo Naddeo and Clara A. Mozejko

Synthesis of polyethersulfone (PES)/GO-SiO2 mixed matrix membranes for oily wastewater treatment

Maryam B. Alkindy, Vincenzo Naddeo, Fawzi Banat and Shadi W. Hasan

Predicting wastewater treatment plant performance during aeration demand shifting with a dual-layer reaction settling model

Matteo Giberti, Recep Kaan Dereli, Damian Flynn and Eoin Casey

Impact of rainfall properties on the performance of hydrological models for green roofs simulation

Mirka Mobilia and Antonia Longobardi

Short-term flexibility for energy grids provided by wastewater treatment plants with anaerobic sludge digestion

M. Schäfer

Design of an integration platform between the water-energy nexus and a business model applied for sustainable development

Heba Ahmed Mosalam and Mohamed El-Barad

Analysis of anaerobic digester mixing: comparison of long shafted paddle mixing vs gas mixing

U. Bergamo, G. Viccione, S. Coppola, A. Landi, A. Meda and C. Gualtieri

A resilience assessment framework for critical infrastructure networks’ interdependencies

Maryam Imani and Donya Hajializadeh

On the use of ARIMA modesl for short-term water tank levels forecasting

G. Viccione, C. Guarnaccia, S. Mancini, J. Quartieri

An economic model of risk assessment for water projects

Antonio Nesticò, Gianluigi De Mare, Gabriella Maselli

Water-energy nexus for estuarine systems with seasonal salinity variations: a thermodynamic feasibility analysis of reverse osmosis (RO)-pressure retarded osmosis (PRO) combinations

Arijit Chakraborty, Anirban Roy