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Processes
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Eco-Friendly Materials in Emergent Contaminants Removal Processes
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Eco-Friendly Materials in Emergent Contaminants Removal Processes

A special issue of Processes (ISSN 2227-9717). This special issue belongs to the section "Materials Processes".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 6643

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jennifer Gubitosa

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Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
Interests: water purification technologies; environmental chemistry; green chemistry; biomaterials; nanotechnology; cosmetics; physical chemistry; adsorption processes; pharmacy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Vito Rizzi

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Guest Editor
Dipartimento di Chimica, Università di Bari Aldo Moro, Via Orabona 4, 70126 Bari, Italy
Interests: contaminants of emerging concern (CECs); organic dyes adsorption; adsorption processes; advanced oxidation processes (AOPs); water remediation technologies; upcycling; circular economy; green chemistry; nanotechnology; physical chemistry; photochemical processes; photodynamic therapy (PDT); fluorescence spectroscopy; UV-Vis spectroscopy; FTIR-spectroscopy; photophysics; bio-polymers; waste management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Pinalysa Cosma

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Guest Editor
Department of Chemistry, Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy
Interests: electrochemistry; drug delivery systems; biopolymers; cosmetics; colloids; natural pigments; antioxidants; nanomaterials and nanotechnologies; ROS; PDT; supramolecular chemistry; bioactive compounds and natural extracts; spectroscopies; chemical physics
Dr. Paola Fini

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Guest Editor
Institute for Chemical and Physical Processes IPCF, Italian National Research Council, Rome, Italy
Interests: TGA; DSC; photodynamic therapy; pollutants adsorption from wastewater; ROS detection; nanomaterials; natural pigments; cosmetics; natural extracts; supramolecular chemistry; drug delivery systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Water, air, and soil—essential resources for guaranteeing life—are progressively threatened by pollution.

In the last decades, emergent contaminants have raised increasing attention, due to their toxicological impact on human and environmental health.

These substances (i.e., cosmetic and pharmaceutical products, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides) derive from daily human activities, agricultural practices, or industrial applications.

The sustainable development of strategies to preserve water, air, and soil quality should be a primary goal.

Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel technologies and methods for pollutants removal.

With the increasing demand for greener and ecological approaches, different types of adsorbent materials for purification and recovery operations should be explored and developed by the industry.

This Special Issue on “Eco-Friendly Materials in Emergent Contaminants Removal Processes” aims to offer an overview of novel materials, principally derived from food or agricultural wastes, able not only to remove contaminants but also to recover and regenerate for further use, according to the principles of green chemistry, circular economy, and sustainability.

Dr. Jennifer Gubitosa
Dr. Vito Rizzi
Prof. Dr. Pinalysa Cosma
Dr. Paola Fini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Processes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Emergent contaminants
  • Adsorption processes
  • Adsorption materials
  • Agricultural wastes
  • Food wastes
  • Eco-Friendly Materials
  • Recycle
  • Green Chemistry
  • Circular economy
  • Sustainability

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 844 KiB  
Article
Copper Recovery from Aqueous Solutions by Hemp Shives: Adsorption Studies and Modeling
by Chiara Mongioví and Grégorio Crini
Processes 2023, 11(1), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr11010191 - 6 Jan 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1643
Abstract
This article describes the performance of hemp shives, a co-product of the hemp industry, when used as an adsorbent to recover copper present in aqueous solutions by a batch method. Two materials provided by an industrial partner, namely water-washed hemp shives (SHI-W) and [...] Read more.
This article describes the performance of hemp shives, a co-product of the hemp industry, when used as an adsorbent to recover copper present in aqueous solutions by a batch method. Two materials provided by an industrial partner, namely water-washed hemp shives (SHI-W) and Na2CO3-activated shives (SHI-C), were studied. Two important variables in the water treatment industry, i.e., pH and ionic strength of the solution, were studied to evaluate their impact on the purification performance of the materials. The results obtained clearly indicated that the performance in terms of Cu removal obtained from the SHI-C material was significantly higher than that obtained with SHI-W, mainly due to the structural and chemical modifications after carbonate treatment. For each dose of this adsorbent, a percentage of recovery between 90 and 100% was achieved, independently of the pH value in the range 3–5. In the case of SHI-W, the highest values were between 60 and 75% and were both dependent on the pH and the dose used. SHI-C was also able to selectively remove 70% of copper in the presence of NaCl 1 M. The analysis of the isotherms indicated the presence of a complex adsorption mechanism that cannot be described by only one isotherm model. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Friendly Materials in Emergent Contaminants Removal Processes)
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16 pages, 2383 KiB  
Article
Removal of Emerging Contaminants from Water Using Cyclodextrin-Based Polymers and Advanced Oxidation Processes: The Case of Carbamazepine
by Jennifer Gubitosa, Chiara Mongiovi’, Roberto Romita, Pinalysa Cosma, Sergio Nuzzo, Vito Rizzi and Paola Fini
Processes 2022, 10(9), 1703; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr10091703 - 26 Aug 2022
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1747
Abstract
Using a water-insoluble β-cyclodextrin-epichlorohydrin copolymer (β-EPI) as an adsorbent to remove carbamazepine (CBZ), an anti-epileptic drug often found both in hospital and urban wastewater, has been validated. The effect of several physicochemical parameters on CBZ retention onto β-EPI, such as contact time, adsorbent [...] Read more.
Using a water-insoluble β-cyclodextrin-epichlorohydrin copolymer (β-EPI) as an adsorbent to remove carbamazepine (CBZ), an anti-epileptic drug often found both in hospital and urban wastewater, has been validated. The effect of several physicochemical parameters on CBZ retention onto β-EPI, such as contact time, adsorbent dosage, CBZ initial concentration, pH, salts, and temperature, was assessed. The adsorption process occurs in a very short time, less than 20 min, and depends on CBZ concentration and β-EPI amount used. Changes in pH and salt presence, regardless of the type of cation or anion used, do not significantly affect the system’s efficiency. Desorption experiments were also performed, and methanol has proven to be the best CBZ extraction medium; it was also found that the polymer can be recovered and reused for at least five cycles, which makes it cheap and environmentally friendly. Advanced oxidation processes were also tested for CBZ removal by synthesizing a β-EPI polymer bearing titanium dioxide for adsorption and consecutive photocatalytic degradation of the retained pollutant directly onto the material; the effect of TiO2 amount in the polymer on CBZ oxidation was evaluated. These experiments highlighted the system’s effectiveness, and it was also observed that the H2O2 presence in the solution enhanced the CBZ photodegradation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Friendly Materials in Emergent Contaminants Removal Processes)
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Graphical abstract

21 pages, 3421 KiB  
Article
Regenerable Kiwi Peels as an Adsorbent to Remove and Reuse the Emerging Pollutant Propranolol from Water
by Jennifer Gubitosa, Vito Rizzi, Paola Fini, Sergio Nuzzo and Pinalysa Cosma
Processes 2022, 10(7), 1417; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr10071417 - 20 Jul 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2280
Abstract
This work aims to characterize the adsorption process of propranolol HCl, an emerging pollutant and a widely used β-blocker, onto kiwi peels, an agricultural waste. The use of UV-vis spectroscopy was considered to obtain information about the pollutant removal working in the in-batch [...] Read more.
This work aims to characterize the adsorption process of propranolol HCl, an emerging pollutant and a widely used β-blocker, onto kiwi peels, an agricultural waste. The use of UV-vis spectroscopy was considered to obtain information about the pollutant removal working in the in-batch mode. In a relatively short time, the adsorption process could remove the pollutant from water. A kiwi peel maximum adsorption capacity of 2 mg/g was obtained. With the perspective of scaling up the process, preliminary in-flux measurements were also performed. The investigation of the whole in-batch adsorption process was conducted by studying the effect of ionic strength (adopting salt concentrations from 0 to 0.4 M), pH values (from 2 to 12), adsorbent/pollutant amounts (from 25 to 100 mg and from 7.5 to 15 mg/L, respectively), and temperature values (from 289 to 305 K). The thermodynamics, the adsorption isotherms, and the kinetics of the adsorption process were also carefully investigated. The Langmuir model fitted the experimental data well, with an R2 of 0.9912, restituting KL: 1 L/mg and Q0: 1.8 mg/g. The temperature increase enhanced the pollutant removal due to the endothermic adsorption characteristics. Accordingly, a ΔH°298K of +70 KJ/mol was obtained. The pseudo-first-order kinetic model described the process. Due to the results observed during the study of the effects of pH and ionic strength, the prominent presence of electrostatic interactions, working in synergy with hydrophobic forces and H-bonds between the pollutant and kiwi peel surfaces, was successfully demonstrated. In particular, FTIR-ATR measurements confirmed the latter findings. Finally, desorption experiments for recycling 100% of propranolol for each cycle were performed using 0.1 M MgCl2. Ten cycles of adsorption/desorption were obtained and indicated that the percentage of propranolol removal was not affected during each run, increasing the maximum adsorption from 2 to 20 mg/g. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Eco-Friendly Materials in Emergent Contaminants Removal Processes)
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