npj Clean WaterPub Date : 2025-01-19DOI: 10.1038/s41545-025-00435-9
Saeed Shirazian, Niloofar Pirestani, Alexander E. G. Baker, Roozbeh Soltani
{"title":"A comprehensive review of KCC-1 fibrous silica for water treatment","authors":"Saeed Shirazian, Niloofar Pirestani, Alexander E. G. Baker, Roozbeh Soltani","doi":"10.1038/s41545-025-00435-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-025-00435-9","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The growing global demand for freshwater necessitates advanced water treatment technologies. This review highlights the application of fibrous silica spheres, KCC-1, in water remediation, focusing on the removal of heavy metals and organic dyes. KCC-1’s unique fibrous morphology, high surface area, and physicochemical properties make it a promising adsorbent. This work examines its synthesis, modifications, and advantages, providing insights into optimizing KCC-1-based adsorbents for sustainable water treatment.</p>","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142989212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj Clean WaterPub Date : 2025-01-07DOI: 10.1038/s41545-024-00432-4
Zishang Chen, Hong Wang, Yuxuan Zhu, Xiaoping Chen, Shuanglin Gui, Aijing Ma, Jianxin Li
{"title":"Electrochemical reactor with carbon membrane electrodes for efficient phenol removal via anode and cathode synergism","authors":"Zishang Chen, Hong Wang, Yuxuan Zhu, Xiaoping Chen, Shuanglin Gui, Aijing Ma, Jianxin Li","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00432-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-024-00432-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Current electrochemical membrane reactors (EMRs) focus on half-cell reactions, which limits their efficiency. Herein, an EMR-P with full-cell reactions was constructed using a carbon membrane (CM) as the cathode and a TiO<sub>2</sub>-loaded CM as the anode. Noteworthy, this proposed innovative design has no ion-exchange membrane and consists of two permeates for anodic electrocatalytic and cathodic electro-Fenton processes. Results showed that the removal rates of phenol and COD by EMR-P were 99.2% and 93.9%, respectively, with energy consumption of 0.43 kWh kg COD<sup>–1</sup>, which were superior to those of other EMRs. Such superior performance of EMR-P was attributed to the synergism of electro-Fenton and electrocatalytic oxidation, as well as the high adsorption property of CM, which promoted <span>({1atop}{rm{O}}_{2})</span> generation and COD removal. Additionally, the cathode made more contribution to the COD removal (59.0%) than the anode (41.0%). Overall, this work provides several insights into the design of EMRs for cleaning industrial wastewater.</p>","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142934933","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj Clean WaterPub Date : 2025-01-06DOI: 10.1038/s41545-024-00424-4
Feiyang Xia, Wei Yang, Haixiao Zhao, Yanpeng Cai, Qian Tan
{"title":"Occurrence characteristics and transport processes of riverine microplastics in different connectivity contexts","authors":"Feiyang Xia, Wei Yang, Haixiao Zhao, Yanpeng Cai, Qian Tan","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00424-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41545-024-00424-4","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This study is the first to quantify the migration processes of riverine microplastics under different connectivity contexts based on the spatial variation characteristics of microplastic loads. Microplastics in multidammed, single-dammed, and nondammed rivers are significantly different in three categories: abundance, flux, and inventory. Artificial damming can lead to multicategory reorganization of riverine microplastics, including size, polymer type, shape, and color. Artificial damming has led to the formation of microplastic hotspots in river waters and sediments due to reduced river mobility. Notably, low-velocity regions in non-dammed rivers are high hotspot for microplastic deposition, and their inventories may even be 10.63–12.71 times higher than those of other riverbeds. Additionally, results based on microplastic abundance differ significantly from those based on microplastic loads, which in some cases even showed contradictory results. Therefore, future studies must incorporate microplastic loads into the assessment to enhance our understanding of the fate of microplastics in river systems.</p>","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":"117 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":11.4,"publicationDate":"2025-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142929602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Full recovery of brines at normal temperature with process-heat-supplied coupled air-carried evaporating separation (ACES) cycle","authors":"Jing Yu, Yujiang Xia, Liang Chen, Weidong Yan, Baobin Liu, Sumin Jin","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00430-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41545-024-00430-6","url":null,"abstract":"Conventional air-carried evaporating separation (ACES) technology, to achieve complete separation and recovery of water and salt in brine, tends to necessitate heating air above a critical temperature (typically>90 °C). In this paper, a novel concept of process-heat-supplied and an ACES cycle with this technique is proposed. A comprehensive thermodynamic analytical investigation is conducted. The results indicate that at heat source supply temperature Tsupply of only 45.17 °C, this novel unit is capable of achieving complete separation of water and salt from 5 wt% concentration brine. Meanwhile, thermodynamic mechanism analysis reveals that sufficient process-heat-supplied affords the fluid self-adaptive regulation on the driving potential of heat and mass transfer, thus circumventing traditional heat and mass transfer limitation. Additionally, a solar ACES system with process-heat-supplied incorporating heat pump is further proposed. For this system, theoretical evaporation rate for unit area of solar irradiation me-solar = 2.23 kg/(m2·h), integrated solar utilization efficiency ηi = 188%; while considering overall losses me-solar = 1.41 kg/(m2·h), ηi = 95.2%.","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":" ","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00430-6.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142887950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj Clean WaterPub Date : 2024-12-24DOI: 10.1038/s41545-024-00426-2
Gunture, Tae Yoon Lee
{"title":"Biomass-derived multiatom-doped carbon dots for the photocatalytic reduction of Cr(VI) and precipitation of Cr(III)","authors":"Gunture, Tae Yoon Lee","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00426-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41545-024-00426-2","url":null,"abstract":"The release of heavy metal ions, especially hexavalent chromium [Cr(VI)], from industrial processes poses significant health and environmental risks. Cr(VI) does not readily degrade but can be reduced to the less toxic trivalent form [Cr(III)] that exhibits lower adsorption, making it easier to manage and remove from environmental systems. This paper proposes a single-step solvothermal method to synthesize fluorescent multiatom-doped (N, K, Cl, Mg, and Ca) carbon dots (MACDs) from Kalanchoe pinnata leaves (carbon precursor) and ethanol (solvent). These MACDs serve as effective photocatalysts for Cr(VI) reduction under one sun illumination (AM 1.5 G conditions). The reaction achieved a 91% Cr(VI) removal from a 20 ppm deionized water solution in 420 min and complete removal (100%) in an acidic solution with the same initial concentration in 120 min. The MACDs demonstrated excellent photocatalytic performance across tap, river, and lake water. These biomass-derived MACDs demonstrate strong potential for effective Cr-contaminated water remediation.","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":" ","pages":"1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00426-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142875306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A review of advances & potential of applying nanomaterials for biofilm inhibition","authors":"Yi-Han Cao, Wen-Jun Cai, Xi-Wei He, Hai-Liang Song, Jingsi Gao, Yu-Li Yang, Jianfeng Zhou","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00423-5","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41545-024-00423-5","url":null,"abstract":"Biofilms pose significant challenges due to their role in biological contamination and water quality damage. This review explores physical/chemical strategies for controlling biofilms, emphasizing the potential of nanomaterials to enhance antibiofilm performance. Popular characterization methods in biofilm studies are summarized in two aspects, bactericidal monitoring, and anti-adhesion monitoring, which serve as a toolbox for future studies. The insights provided are crucial for advancing biofilm management in various fields.","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":" ","pages":"1-21"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00423-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142858475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj Clean WaterPub Date : 2024-12-19DOI: 10.1038/s41545-024-00425-3
Luis D. Loor-Urgilés, Tabata N. Feijoó, Carlos A. Martínez-Huitle, Elisama Vieira dos Santos, Patricio J. Espinoza-Montero
{"title":"Nanomaterial enhanced photoelectrocatalysis and photocatalysis for chemical oxygen demand sensing a comprehensive review","authors":"Luis D. Loor-Urgilés, Tabata N. Feijoó, Carlos A. Martínez-Huitle, Elisama Vieira dos Santos, Patricio J. Espinoza-Montero","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00425-3","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41545-024-00425-3","url":null,"abstract":"Chemical oxygen demand-COD is essential for water pollution control and monitoring and is also used to validate wastewater treatment technologies. Conventional COD determination use of costly toxic inputs that do not align with Sustainable Development Goals 6. To address these environmental challenges, photocatalytic (PC)- and photoelectrocatalytic (PEC)-COD sensors have emerged as a solution. This comprehensive review examines PC-COD and PEC-COD sensors in terms of nanomaterials used and their properties, focusing on how multiple variables influence PC activity and sensor performance. Analytical principles and operational variables affecting performance in COD determination are discussed. Finally, a series of materials and conditions are proposed to improve the viability of PEC-COD sensors currently and in the future.","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":" ","pages":"1-14"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00425-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142845226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj Clean WaterPub Date : 2024-12-19DOI: 10.1038/s41545-024-00427-1
Md. Moshiur Rahman Tushar, Zaki Alam Pushan, Nirupam Aich, Lewis S. Rowles
{"title":"Balancing sustainability goals and treatment efficacy for PFAS removal from water","authors":"Md. Moshiur Rahman Tushar, Zaki Alam Pushan, Nirupam Aich, Lewis S. Rowles","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00427-1","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41545-024-00427-1","url":null,"abstract":"Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are emerging water contaminants with significant environmental and health impacts, posing challenges in water treatment due to their high stability and persistence. With increasing regulations, a critical need remains in understanding the sustainability of PFAS treatment technologies. Our review examines the environmental, economic, and social impacts of current PFAS treatment technologies across different water types and contexts. Additionally, we propose a framework for future sustainability studies to enable more holistic technology evaluations under specific conditions.","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":" ","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00427-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142845146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Metal–phenolic coating on membrane for ultrafast antibiotics adsorptive removal from water","authors":"Hongjie Zhang, Wenjing Geng, Yifei Cai, Jiaqi Huo, Yipeng Zang, Cheng Chen","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00418-2","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41545-024-00418-2","url":null,"abstract":"Eliminating antibiotics from wastewater remains a critical challenge. This work introduces durable, high-performance adsorptive membranes formed by polymerizing tannic acid (TA) and Fe3+ ions on commercial substrates, known as TA-Fe, to enhance antibiotic removal. Using a filtration process, the TA-Fe modified membrane (MCM) demonstrated excellent ciprofloxacin hydrochloride removal efficiency, permeance, and reusability. The MCM achieved high removal capability for antibiotics, with a permeance of 3815 L m−2 h−1 bar−1 and 96.7% removal efficiency within 1.3 min—115 times faster than traditional methods. Furthermore, the MCM sustained an impressive adsorptive capacity of 99.4% even after 10 consecutive cycles. This work profoundly progresses the domain of adsorptive membrane technology, offering a promising avenue for the sustainable adsorption and separation of antibiotics from contaminated wastewater.","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":" ","pages":"1-10"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00418-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142845169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
npj Clean WaterPub Date : 2024-12-06DOI: 10.1038/s41545-024-00422-6
Bhekie B. Mamba
{"title":"Towards healthy and economically sustainable communities through clean water and resource recovery","authors":"Bhekie B. Mamba","doi":"10.1038/s41545-024-00422-6","DOIUrl":"10.1038/s41545-024-00422-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19375,"journal":{"name":"npj Clean Water","volume":" ","pages":"1-1"},"PeriodicalIF":10.4,"publicationDate":"2024-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-024-00422-6.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142778657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}