Recent Trends in Integrated Wastewater Treatment for Sustainable Development

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Background

The wastewater generated from different sources such as municipal, domestic, and industrial activities is the major global environmental concern as these contain a plethora of highly toxic and hazardous refractory organic, inorganic, and organometallic compounds, pathogenic microorganisms, and chemical elements including heavy metals, which reach far off areas due to the medium of dispersion and thus create an ecological nuisance and detrimental health hazards in living beings at different functional levels. In the current scenario, although it is not possible to stop the release of wastewater into the environment, it is feasible to overcome its serious devastating effects on humans and the entire ecosystem by its treatment using various methods. Therefore, adequate treatment is essential before the wastewater is disposed into the environment.

The present single-stage remediation technologies/approaches are only changing the form of the problem and fail to remediate the wide range of pollutants from wastewater thoroughly due to low treatment efficiency and poor adaptability to pollutants. In addition, these remedies are unsuitable for large-scale use. Thus, various researchers across the globe are working to devise advanced remediation approaches as an emerging technology for the treatment and/or reduction of contamination of wastewater. In the recent past, innovative integrated technologies based on biological, physical, and/or chemical approaches to remediate or cleaning up many environmental contaminants from effluents have gained worldwide attention. Integrated treatment methods have been widely practised by coupling two or more biological, physical, and chemical processes to treat treatment/elimination of unwanted color, target compounds and toxicity from wastewater or contaminated environment. One example of such recent approaches is microbe-assisted phytoremediation of wastewater pollutants either in constructed wetland or floating treatment wetland system. Other emerging remediation methods include microbial fuel cell technology (anammox or constructed wetlands) or electrobioremediation.

The aim of this Research Topic, Recent Trends in Integrated Wastewater Treatment for Sustainable Development, is to provide a suitable platform to publish established and up-to-date research on the current trends, developments, and applications of integrated treatment technologies in degradation and detoxification of all type of wastewater or their pollutants including new emerging endocrine-disrupting chemicals discharges from distilleries, tanneries, pulp and paper mills, refineries, pharmaceutical industries and so on. This Research Topic, therefore, welcomes Original Research or Review articles focusing on all aspects of integrated treatment approaches including new advancement and applications for the efficient remediation of contaminants present in wastewater at the lab, pilot plant, or real scale. Contributions from both experimental and numerical researchers are encouraged. Reports on field trials are of special interest.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
• Sequential treatment of wastewater for sustainable development and environmental safety
• Integrated Bacteria-algae based biological approaches for contaminants degradation
• Combinatory Fungal-Bacterial degradation and detoxification of wastewater pollutants
• Bioaugmentation of constructed wetland with plant growth-promoting bacteria for wastewater remediation
• Microalgal-plant based remediation of emerging contaminants from wastewater
• Application of plant-bacterial remediation for environmental sustainability
• Knowledge gaps and limitations in field application of integrated technology
• Emerging bioremediation approach in the treatment of pollutants
• Constructed wetlands-microbial fuel cells for degradation and detoxification of environmental contaminants
• Bioelectrochemical systems for treatment of wastewater pollutants
• Hybrid bioreactors treatment system for removal of wastewater pollutants
• Plant-microbial fuel cells in bioremediation and biodegradation of wastewaters
• Integration of physico-chemical processes with microbial systems for enhanced remediation of wastewater pollutants
• Hybrid approaches coupling bioremediation with advance oxidation processes (AOPs)
• Integrated membrane-microbial fuel cell technologies for complex recycling
• Integrated anaerobic-aerobic processes for treatment of wastewater pollutants
• Physicochemical–biotechnological approaches for wastewater remediation
• Molecular aspects of novel integrated bioremediation approaches to identify novel degrading genes, metabolites, metabolic pathways and plant-microbe mechanisms during wastewater treatment

Submissions to the Microbiotechnology section must be hypothesis driven, merely descriptive papers won't be considered for review. Submissions concerning aspects and technologies without a clear microbial focus should be submitted via Water & Wastewater Management section instead.

Keywords: Bioremediation, Phytoremediation, Constructed Wetland-Microbial Fuel Cell, Anaerobic-Aerobic Processes, Emerging Contaminants, Industrial Wastewater

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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