Ecotechnologies for Wastewater Treatment - Impacting the Environment with Innovation in Wastewater Treatment

Acknowledging that resource efficiency as well as ecosystem protection are crucial goals to tackle has led to a deep rethinking in the way wastewater has been dealt with up to the 20th century. Indeed, pollution reduction to harmless levels has been the main focus of conventional wastewater treatment plants which have deployed effective and reliable solutions to get rid of suspended and dissolved pollutants. Nowadays, those same wastewaters are looked at as a mine of valuable resources that are to be harvested from the sewage through efficient technologies operated within water and resource recovery facilities (formerly known as wastewater treatment plants).

Rethinking the way we deal with wastewater has become the new challenge and a key tool to implement the Circular Economy Action Plan, to address numerous UN Sustainable Development Goals, as well as to provide support tools to improve resilience to environmental and global threats, including climate change, water and food security, epidemic outbreaks and political instability.

To tackle these challenging goals, new technologies as well as multidisciplinary tools are needed to pave the way toward a new water-economy, including: innovative technologies, integrated and risk-based approaches, and adequate regulatory and economic guidelines to promote technological uptake and societal acceptance.

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: Ecotechnologies for Wastewater Treatment – Impacting the environment with innovation in wastewater treatment
Manuela Antonelli, Andrea Turolla, Elena Ficara, Juan Lema, Roberto Canziani, Francesca Malpei

Phosphorus recovery from a pilot-scale grate furnace: influencing factors beyond wet chemical leaching conditions
G. Boniardi, A. Turolla, L. Fiameni, E. Gelmi, E. Bontempi, R. Canziani 

Granulation strategies applied to industrial wastewater treatment: from lab to full-scale
M. Caluwé, K. Goossens, K. Seguel Suazo, E. Tsertou, J. Dries

Ammonium recovery from agro-industrial digestate using bioelectrochemical systems
A. Carucci, G. Erby, G. Puggioni, D. Spiga, F. Frugoni, S. Milia

An essential tool for WRRF modelling: a realistic and complete influent generator for flow rate and water quality based on data-driven methods
Feiyi Li, Peter A. Vanrolleghem

Going beyond conventional wastewater treatment plants within circular bioeconomy concept – a sustainability assessment study
Hadis Marami, Panagiotis Tsapekos, Benyamin Khoshnevisan, Jeanette Agertved Madsen, Jacob Kragh Andersen, Shahin Rafiee, Irini Angelidaki

Evaluating the potential impact of energy-efficient ammonia control on the carbon footprint of a full-scale wastewater treatment plant
Riccardo Boiocchi, Giorgio Bertanza

Life cycle assessment of paper mill wastewater: a case study in Viet Nam
Hiep Nghia Bui, Yi-Ching Chen, Anh Thi Pham, Si Ling Ng, Kun-Yi Andrew Lin, Ngan Quang Viet Nguyen, Ha Manh Bui

Analysis of the variation of costs for sewage sludge transport, recovery and disposal in Northern Italy: a recent survey (2015–2021)
M. Domini, A. Abbà, G. Bertanza

Comparing statistical process control charts for fault detection in wastewater treatment
H. L. Marais, V. Zaccaria, M. Odlare

Recovery profile of anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) bacteria inhibited by ZnO nanoparticles
Safiye Can, Tugba Sari, Deniz Akgul

Removal of microplastics from wastewater: available techniques and way forward
Surya Singh, Madhanraj Kalyanasundaram, Vishal Diwan