About this Research Topic
One of the most critical challenges we face today is access to clean water. Climate change, industrialization, high rates of urbanization, and population growth have resulted in many countries suffering from water crises, especially in the arid and semi-arid areas. Countries in different regions of the world have also been struggling over regional water availability and it is anticipated that these struggles may result in conflicts over shared water resources in these regions. Considering the adverse consequences of the water crisis, countries have been trying to increasingly cope with this problem of water availability by implementing sustainable water management plans and looking for alternative water supply sources. Water conservation, water reuse, and desalination of seawater and brackish groundwater are among those strategies that have been implemented to address the water crises. In recent years, more and more countries are considering water reuse as an alternative water supply to supplement freshwater sources. Water reuse decreases the pressure on freshwater resources, reduces the pollution that is being discharged to water bodies, and can be a reliable source compared to other water resources that are directly dependent on rainfall.
One of the barriers to water reuse is concern over its potential negative impact on human and environmental health. Even today, treated and untreated wastewater reuse is sometimes poorly controlled. A large portion (estimated at over 80% globally, and over 95% in some developing countries) of the world’s wastewater is still released to the environment without treatment. The current challenge is to make reuse circuits shorter, safer, and economically sustainable.
The overarching goal of this Research Topic is to collect information worldwide about different physico-chemical technologies developed for water detoxification and disinfection, their kinetics, fundamentals, mechanisms, scaling-up, and real-scale applications to address the problem posed by the lack of access to safe water supply sources and/or alleviate the risks involved in wastewater reuse.
The scope of this Research Topic includes, but it is not limited by, novel scientific research and review papers on the following themes:
- Phase change advanced water detox and disinfection (e.g., adsorption, membrane technologies, phase separation technologies).
- Advanced oxidation processes (e.g. photocatalysis, Fenton and Fenton-like processes, wet oxidation)
- Materials for water detoxification and disinfection (e.g. advanced materials, nanomaterials, polymeric, and natural)
- Ultrafiltration for water purification
- Pilot treatment and upscaling studies
- Toxicity assessment of the treated effluents
- Environmental impacts of the treated effluents
One of the barriers to water reuse is concern over its potential negative impact on human and environmental health. Even today, treated and untreated wastewater reuse is sometimes poorly controlled. A large portion (estimated at over 80% globally, and over 95% in some developing countries) of the world’s wastewater is still released to the environment without treatment. The current challenge is to make reuse circuits shorter, safer, and economically sustainable.
The overarching goal of this Research Topic is to collect information worldwide about different physico-chemical technologies developed for water detoxification and disinfection, their kinetics, fundamentals, mechanisms, scaling-up, and real-scale applications to address the problem posed by the lack of access to safe water supply sources and/or alleviate the risks involved in wastewater reuse.
The scope of this Research Topic includes, but it is not limited by, novel scientific research and review papers on the following themes:
- Phase change advanced water detox and disinfection (e.g., adsorption, membrane technologies, phase separation technologies).
- Advanced oxidation processes (e.g. photocatalysis, Fenton and Fenton-like processes, wet oxidation)
- Materials for water detoxification and disinfection (e.g. advanced materials, nanomaterials, polymeric, and natural)
- Ultrafiltration for water purification
- Pilot treatment and upscaling studies
- Toxicity assessment of the treated effluents
- Environmental impacts of the treated effluents
Keywords: water treatment, water, wastewater, detoxification, disinfection, advanced treatment, physico-chemical technologies, toxicity assessment, environmental impact
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.
