Themed collection Emerging Investigator Series

Potential modeling framework of integrating mechanistic and data-driven models to address the microbiological composition and functions that are currently underrepresented in standalone models.

By incorporating antifragility, water systems may move beyond resilience and improve performance with extreme events.

The superoxide radical (O₂˙⁻) is an important reactive oxygen species (ROS) in diverse natural aquatic systems and engineered water treatment processes.

Graphitic carbon nitride (g-C₃N₄) is a promising visible-light-responsive photocatalyst for sustainable water purification.

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.

Bottom-up engineering approaches are transforming biological wastewater treatment.

Chromium can exist as both trivalent Cr(III) and hexavalent Cr(VI) in typical drinking water conditions, with Cr(VI) being of particular concern due to its high toxicity and new regulatory perspectives.

Sewer surveillance may be a useful tool for epidemiology that would benefit from improved understanding of the fate of microbial agents and prescription antibiotics during conveyance in sewer systems.

Photocatalytic membrane reactors (PMRs) can degrade organic compounds in wastewater and in water from different real matrices. The PMR surface can be modified for anti-fouling/self-cleaning properties, enabling reuse and extending lifespan.

In energy efficient membrane distillation, the low transmembrane temperature difference exacerbates salinity's effect on water flux and specific energy consumption.

Freshwater scarcity, caused by population growth and climate change, has boosted the demand for desalination technologies.

Elucidation of N₂O formation mechanisms in aerobic-based wastewater treatment is essential for effective greenhouse gas mitigation, whereas mainstream anaerobic treatment requires improved methane recoverability.

If challenges such as mechanical stability, scaling, biofouling and concentration polarization at high pressures are addressed, high-pressure RO could be used to efficiently remove water from high-salinity waste brines as part of a zero-liquid-discharge disposal process.

Bioretention vegetation contributes to both the hydrologic and pollutant removal functions of bioretention.

We present potential impacts of climate on drinking water treatment and review decision support systems for these utilities.

The photolysis of hypochlorous acid (HOCl) and hypochlorite (OCl⁻) produces a suite of reactive oxidants, including hydroxyl radicals (˙OH), chlorine radicals (Cl˙), and ozone (O₃).

Forces influencing virion sorption and recent findings of coagulation-based inactivation inform new research directions for mitigating waterborne viruses by coagulation.

This review provides a comprehensive look at whether a pandemic enveloped virus would pose challenges for the wastewater and drinking water industries.

Disinfection of antibiotic-resistant B. subtilis, damage of its intracellular antibiotic resistance gene (ARG), and prevention of horizontal ARG transfer were greater by 222 than 254 nm, despite similar extracted ARG damage between UV wavelengths.

Harmful algal blooms threaten ecosystems and water safety, necessitating rapid treatment strategies. This study developed an electrochemical ozonation process to realize simultaneous cyanobacteria inactivation and microcystin removal.

Combining ultrafiltration and advanced oxidation processes, a single-step reactor removes aqueous PFAS and destroys them in situ, allowing long-term reuse of the effective photocatalyst.

Establishing an optimized method to harvest and quantify cells of biofilms from drinking water systems.

Diamine modification of polyamide reverse osmosis membranes using carbodiimide chemistry and heat treatment improves the removal of small neutral molecules.

The application of electron beam technology for water treatment has been proposed as a faster & safer approach to decomposing persistent contaminants, because it can rapidly generate high amounts of both oxidizing and reducing reactive species without added chemicals.

Enhancing the degradation of ciprofloxacin in water using Oxone activated by urchin-like cubic and hollow-structured cobalt@N-doped carbon.

The impacts of aeration (in terms of bubble sizes and airflow rates) on PFOA/PFOS removal as well as electrocoagulation performance were examined in this study.

Aqueous microplastic were tested in terms of leachate formation and surface oxidation during UV irradiation. Surface properties (FTIR, RAMAN, XPS) and leachate characteristics (UV₂₅₄, DOC, fluorescence spectroscopy) were analyzed concurrently.

DD4 can coordinate with native microbiomes to degrade 1,4-dioxane when fueled with propane and 1-propanol in biomass-rich and -poor environments, respectively.

Mineral fouling is a major hindrance to high recovery effluent nanofiltration, with calcium phosphate (Ca-P) and calcium carbonate (CaCO₃) the most prevalent mineral foulants.

Recent applications of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) have demonstrated its ability to track the spread and dynamics of COVID-19 at the community level.

Strong-acid functionalized cathode is pH stable and sulfonic groups are stable to charge–discharge cycling.

This study investigates the effects of sediment particle size on the spatial distributions of contaminants and bacterial communities in the reservoir sediments, which can guide the implementation of partial desilting in the reservoirs.

GenX is a major per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) of environmental concern. Redox-copolymers are explored as selective adsorbents for the electrochemically-mediated separation and remediation of GenX from water.

This study quantified the theoretical minimum energy required to recover fertilizer products from different environmental waste streams.

The removal of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water supplies is crucial to protect the public and the environment.

Operating reverse osmosis (RO) in the mesopelagic zone (i.e., a few hundred meters under the ocean surface) with open modules can potentially reduce the energy consumption of seawater desalination by over 50% to approach the thermodynamic limit.

Ion exchange membranes provide stabilized local pH in MCDI.

Zooplankton can significantly impact E. coli inactivation in wastewater, but inactivation rates are dependent on environmental conditions.

3D graphene anchored zerovalent metal aerogel as an alternative route for the efficient removal of organic pollutants from wastewater.

Disaggregation of residential smart water meter data can support peak demand quantification and customized conservation and efficiency recommendations.

A sensitive analytical method was developed that simultaneously characterizes 25 unregulated DBPs in wastewater effluents. DBP formation potential with HOCl and NH₂Cl was evaluated across a full-scale wastewater reuse facility for the first time.

This study deals with algae-induced alkalization of refractory wastewater, focusing on improving the performance of subsequent oxidation processes along with direct removal of antibiotics resistant to certain oxidation methods.

Municipally-treated drinking water (DW) is a potential source of exposure to bacterial opportunistic pathogens (OPs), which can cause infection in susceptible individuals.

This study investigated the techno-economic feasibility of forward osmosis (FO) for onsite recycling of saline–alkaline soil washing water with an all-purpose liquid fertiliser as a draw solution.

Anti-fouling and durability are two important parameters that are closely associated with the development and deployment of membrane distillation (MD).

Phosphorus is a critical non-renewable mineral essential for sustainable crop production.

Elucidating the functional stability upon environmental stressors is of great practical importance for managing the system performance of various environmental biological processes (e.g., activated sludge).

Electrochemical methods using carbon electrodes are an attractive option for the detection and reduction of toxic Cr(VI) to benign Cr(III) in drinking water.

This study investigated the transformation of a THM mixture and the change of toxicity risk in drinking water distribution systems for the first time.

High AOM removal achieved by pre-oxidation with coagulation–flocculation-dissolved air flotation. In situ ferrate was formed by wet chemical oxidation of NaOCl-Fe³⁺. Membrane fouling was significantly alleviated and assessed by OCT technique.

A parameterized costing model was used to investigate the impacts of ion selectivity on water treatment price for selective ion removal with capacitive deionization (CDI) systems.

This study determined that at chlorination conditions representative of wastewater treatment, fluoroquinolones, one of the common antibiotic classes, form antibacterially active products.

Organic matter from a membrane bioreactor is fractionated and characterized in novel ways to understand component-specific inhibition of photooxidation reactions.

Microbial communities and methanogenic genes are main reasons for AGS performance recovery from PS-NPs exposure.

The goal of this study is to investigate the occurrence and removal of emerging organic contaminants (EOCs) during wastewater treatment processes and understand the role of enhanced nitrification treatment in removing EOCs.

An elementary reaction based kinetic model was developed for the fate of acetone degradation in UV/free chlorine advanced oxidation process.

The UV/chlorine and UV/H₂O₂ AOPs on the degradation of naproxen were compared. The efficiency of naproxen was much higher by UV/chlorine compared to UV/H₂O₂ under all the tested conditions. ClO˙ and CO₃˙⁻ played important roles in the degradation of naproxen.

This study proposed a new approach to apply the steric pore-flow model to predict the rejection of eight N-nitrosamines and seven VOCs that are of great concern in potable water reuse through an RO membrane.

Rates and selectivity of salicylic acid halogenation can be influenced by highly electrophilic species such as Cl₂, BrCl, and BrOCl.

Modified carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and CNT micropillars are shown to adsorb organic precursors of disinfection byproducts, most notably those of total N-nitrosamines.

Sulfide production in stormwater ponds is a result of increased ubiquitous SRB activity.

The use of electronically sorted (i.e. semiconducting or metallic) single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) for the removal of organic compounds from aqueous environments is investigated.

A suspect screening workflow was developed and applied to a series of samples collected from a small urban water system to identify and confirm the occurrence of 112 organic micropollutants.

Smart stormwater systems will transform cities into coordinated and real-time controlled treatment plants.

Sustainable water management is paramount to ensuring continued access to fresh water resources.

On-site generation of ClO₂ often involves the production of Cl₂ as impurity and the changes of disinfection by-products formation by mixed disinfectant (ClO₂/Cl₂) was presented.

A new graphene oxide (GO) membrane was synthesized by crosslinking GO nanosheets via silica. This membrane was found to remove neutral organic molecules much more efficiently than negatively charged ionic species.

Metabolic kinetics, microscopy, metagenomic analysis, and real-time PCR are applied to characterize nitrogen species transformation and identify and quantify the organisms key to these transformational processes.

In this study, we co-analyze all available 16S rRNA gene sequencing studies from bulk drinking water samples in full-scale drinking water distribution systems.

Recent evaluations of potable reuse treatment trains suggest that the use of UV and UV/H₂O₂ may become increasingly common, particularly in systems employing ozone and/or biofiltration.