Water Research最新文献

{"title":"Switchable thermoresponsive fluorinated hydrogels for reversible and efficient PFAS adsorption-desorption.","authors":"Jinjing Huang, Hengzhi Liu, Zichen Zhang, Shiqing Zhou, Deyou Yu, Jinming Luo","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126062","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Regeneration of PFAS-saturated polymer-based adsorbents with organic solvents is costly, operationally complex, and environmentally burdensome. Here, we developed thermoresponsive fluorinated hydrogels (F9-NIPAM) by incorporating fluorophilic moieties into N-isopropylacrylamide networks, enabling reversible PFAS adsorption-desorption. This distinctive design harnesses a synergistic interplay among fluorine-fluorine interactions, temperature-triggered hydrophilic-hydrophobic transitions (contact angle from 72.71° to 95.62°), and tunable pore contraction (from 3.92 to 2.91 μm), collectively governing reversible behavior across 25-50 °C. Consequently, F9-NIPAM achieved 80-100% sorption of long-chain PFAS (PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, and PFNA) and >95% desorption using mild regenerants (0.1% NaOH+20% MeOH, v/v = 3:7, 50 °C), reducing MeOH consumption by 80% relative to conventional methods (1% NaCl+100% MeOH, v/v = 3:7, 25 °C). Molecular dynamics simulations further revealed thermally assisted desorption by increasing PFAS diffusion (2.17 × 10^-8 cm² s^-1 vs. 1.21 × 10^-8 cm² s^-1) and weakening hydrogen-bond interactions (28 fewer hydrogen bonds), elucidating the molecular basis of reversible release. Techno-economic and life-cycle assessments demonstrated 15-20% improvements in cost efficiency and substantial decreases in carbon emissions (1006.03 and 1231.63 kg CO₂-eq when using waste heat and clean energy, respectively). Overall, this work highlights the value of coupling selective interfacial interactions with stimuli-responsive behavior to enable controlled and reversible PFAS treatment.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126062"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147855513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Overlooked dark dissolved organic matter reveals the migration and transformation of carbon exports in surface and subsurface flows from cropland during rainfall.","authors":"Guo Chen, Hao Wang, Qingwei Zhang, Chao Chang, Sisi Ye, Jian Wang, Fengbao Zhang, Zhenwei Yan, Biao Zhu, Ming Li, Ding He","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126051","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The environmental effects of dissolved organic matter (DOM) depend on its export capacity and pathways to aquatic systems. Fourier transform ion cyclotron mass spectrometry has been widely applied in non-targeted analyses of DOM molecular composition, sources, migration and transformation across hydrological flow paths. However, previous studies extensively focused on assigned formulas (usually the combination of C, H, O, N, S, and P atoms), while extremely limited studies have explored the un-assigned formulas (operationally defined as chemically dark matter), although they are non-negligible DOM molecular fraction and are involved in biogeochemical cycles. Therefore, simulated rainfall was employed combined with amplicon sequencing to elucidate the migration and transformation of assigned DOM (ADOM) and chemically dark DOM (DDOM) in surface flow and subsurface flow from cropland. Overall, surface flow rapidly mobilizes more bioavailable aliphatic compounds, while subsurface flow exported more DOM and favored more recalcitrant and humified ADOM. Meanwhile, DDOM exhibits higher chemodiversity and evenness than ADOM. Compared with surface flow, subsurface flow exported a richer and more even DDOM pool with a higher m/z. Null-model analyses further indicated that ADOM is governed by heterogeneous selection, whereas DDOM is dominated by stochastic processes; moreover, subsurface flow is more prone than surface flow to additional stochasticity imposed by mixing during infiltration. Furthermore, DOM molecular compositions co-varied with microbial communities, and ADOM and DDOM exhibited distinct connectivity and modularity across flow paths. These findings demonstrate the necessity of integrating chemically dark matter into carbon-cycling frameworks to better assess cropland carbon export and its ecological consequences.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126051"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147832093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Impact of oxidative aging on asphaltene interfacial behavior and emulsion stability: Implications for water remediation.","authors":"Qi Zhou, Yongxiang Sun, Sen Yang, Xuguang Song, Xiangyu Xiong, Hongbo Zeng","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126054","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Asphaltenes are key stabilizers of oil-water emulsions in bitumen production and related wastewater systems, yet the influence of oxidative aging on their interfacial behavior remains poorly understood. Here, we systematically investigate how oxidative aging alters the physicochemical properties, aggregation behavior, and interfacial performance of asphaltenes in aqueous environments. Thermal oxidation was simulated using thin-film oven tests, followed by comprehensive experimental characterization combined with density functional theory (DFT) and ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations. Oxidative aging progressively introduces oxygen-containing functional groups, increasing molecular polarity and reducing solvent compatibility. As a result, oxidized asphaltenes form large aggregates whose size becomes weakly dependent on concentration, suggesting a greater tendency for persistent deposition in aquatic systems. Interfacial measurements show that oxidation enhances molecular interfacial activity while simultaneously weakening the mechanical integrity of the interfacial film. Consequently, oxidized asphaltenes form fragile interfacial structures that rupture readily and promote oil droplet coalescence in aqueous media. Theoretical simulations reveal that oxidation strengthens interfacial adsorption through enhanced hydrogen bonding with water and π-π interactions with aromatic oil components. Our results demonstrate that oxidative aging plays a dual role by increasing molecular polarity and interfacial affinity while disrupting film continuity through aggregation. This work provides fundamental insights into the structure-property relationships of aged asphaltenes and offers mechanistic guidance for improving oil-water separation and environmental water remediation.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126054"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147855584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Application of neural network models integrating network topology and mechanistic knowledge for burst localization in water distribution networks.","authors":"KaiQin Xu, Zhipeng Cai, Yang Tao, Zixuan Zheng, Mengfan Lin, Feinan Liu, Jing Luo, Gongduan Fan","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126050","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Accurate pipe burst localization is critical to the emergency response of water distribution networks (WDNs) because it directly affects the timeliness of repair responses and the operational safety of water supply systems. Traditional machine learning-based pipe burst localization methods typically adopt the tabular input format for monitoring data (TIFMD), which may struggle to effectively characterize the propagation characteristics of pipe burst signals in the network. To address this limitation, this study proposes a burst localization framework based on network topology and mechanistic knowledge (BLF-NTMK). The framework explicitly maps the network structure and monitoring data through a topological matrix, enabling the convolutional neural network to learn the spatial propagation patterns of pipe burst features. Meanwhile, a difference enhancement method based on an online hydraulic model and a range constraint method based on District Metered Area zoning are introduced to construct a mechanistic knowledge-driven feature enhancement layer, which improves the model's ability to identify pipe burst signals and the interpretability of localization results from a mechanistic perspective. Results demonstrate that BLF-NTMK significantly improves localization accuracy, achieving >62.97% reduction in mean squared error compared with baseline TIFMD-CNN and outperforming an advanced FL-DenseNet model under the TIFMD paradigm, despite employing a substantially lighter CNN backbone. The framework also exhibits strong robustness to hyperparameter variations and burst leakage intensity changes, and maintains stable localization performance once an appropriate topology matrix resolution is adopted. Moreover, BLF-NTMK maintains high localization performance under limited training data, achieving satisfactory accuracy with only 10% of the full dataset, indicating excellent few-shot learning capability. Validation on a real-world water distribution network in F-City further confirms the practicality of the proposed framework, which can retain acceptable localization accuracy even under high sensor failure ratios, demonstrating its strong engineering applicability in actual large-scale and complex water distribution systems. These findings highlight the effectiveness of topology-aware and mechanism-informed data representations for reliable pipe burst localization in real-world WDNs.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126050"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147831975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Deciphering the paradox of hydrological impacts on multi-media seasonal fate of PFASs in a large river system: role of suspended particulate matter.","authors":"Dandan Yan, Jianwei Dong, Ruxia Qiao, Xia Zhang, Qiuwen Chen, Tao Feng, Xingcheng Yan","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126049","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The distinct physicochemical properties of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), together with hydrological variations, result in their complex fate in river systems. Studies on hydrological influences often report contradictory conclusions, possibly because the mediating role of suspended particulate matter (SPM) has not been fully considered. The properties of SPM, a hydrologically sensitive carrier, change markedly under different conditions, regulating PFAS adsorption and desorption. This study investigated the occurrence of PFASs in multiple media under different flow regimes in the lower reach of the Yangtze River. The results showed that, despite its negligible mass fraction, SPM exhibited an enrichment effect 311-810 times greater than its mass proportion and covered the full chain-length spectrum, bridging the monitoring gap between water and sediments. During high flows, strong hydrodynamic forces drove the resuspension of long-chain PFASs from accumulated reservoirs, making SPM a secondary source, while short-chain PFASs decreased due to dilution. During low flows, SPM acted as an efficient adsorption sink, enriching PFASs and promoting sedimentation. These findings identify SPM as a dynamic regulator rather than a passive particle and highlight that neglecting SPM causes large uncertainty in estimating long-chain PFAS risks, emphasizing the need to integrate it into watershed management.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126049"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147855485","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Effective removal of PFAS by a novel multifunctional microbubble-mediated cathodic adsorption process.","authors":"Yang Li, Yixin Zhang, Chaoyong Sun, Yuxiao Zhang, Na Zhang, Yujue Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126052","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Electro-sorption is a promising technology for PFAS removal; however, cathodic capacity is typically constrained by electrostatic repulsion. To overcome this bottleneck, we developed a microbubble-mediated cathodic adsorption strategy that utilizes anodically generated oxygen microbubbles to selectively enrich and transport PFAS toward an overhead carbon black-polytetrafluoroethylene modified carbon paper (CB-PTFE/CP) cathode. Leveraging its unique superaerophilicity, the cathode rapidly captures the rising PFAS-laden microbubbles. Subsequently, driven by the continuous consumption of oxygen via the oxygen reduction reaction, PFAS enriched at the microbubble surface are forced into the cathode's internal pores, enabling rapid adsorption despite electrostatic barriers. This mechanism achieved generally >90% removal of long-chain PFAS (PFOA, PFOS, PFNA, and OBS) and ∼40% removal of short-chain PFAS (GenX) within 1 h, and maintained robustness even amidst higher concentrations of inorganic ions and dissolved organic matter. Replacing conventional cathodes with CB-PTFE/CP effectively transforms standard electro-sorption into a dual-electrode adsorption system, accelerating removal kinetics of diverse PFAS by 1.6-60 times. Furthermore, the in situ generation of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) via ORR enables coupling with UV irradiation to oxidize coexisting pollutants. Overall, this strategy offers a compelling multifunctional solution to upgrade electro-sorption technologies for the concurrent PFAS and other pollutant removal in complex water matrices.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126052"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147832037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A decomposition-coordination approach for distributed real-time control of urban drainage systems.","authors":"Xinran Luo, Dianchang Wang, Shouhai Peng, Pan Liu, Qian Cheng, Wanqiong Wang, Wei Yin, Jiaqiang Xie","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126042","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Real-time control has emerged as an effective method for increasing the operational efficacy of urban drainage systems (UDSs). Traditional centralized control faces challenges related to efficiency and reliability as UDSs become more complex, which underscores the need for distributed control in ensuring resilient system operation. However, existing distributed control approaches rely heavily on expert experience or historical operational data, limiting their adaptability and scalability. To address this issue, this study proposes a decomposition-coordination-based distributed model predictive control (DC-DMPC) approach that achieves global coordination without requiring prior knowledge or centralized optimization. The method decomposes the UDS into multiple independent subsystems and employs an alternating-direction optimization scheme to ensure flow coordination across the system. It was compared with the practically used rule-based strategy (RBC) and traditional centralized model predictive control (CMPC) in a 20 km² combined UDS in Jiujiang, China. The performance of the three strategies was evaluated under four rainfall events considering variation in spatial distribution under normal operation and emergency scenarios involving communication failure. Results show that: (a) Under normal conditions with homogeneous rainfall, DC-DMPC reduced average flood and CSO volumes by 82.5 % and 23.1 %, respectively, compared to RBC, and by 9.4 % and 12.3 % compared to CMPC. Under inhomogeneous rainfall, these improvements reached 80.0 % and 34.5 % over RBC, and 19.6 % and 25.8 % over CMPC, highlighting DC-DMPC's enhanced adaptability to uneven rainfall patterns. (b) Under communication failures, DC-DMPC exhibited a 9.4 % smaller resilience loss compared to CMPC, along with a 36.4 % reduction in CSO volume. These results indicate that DC-DMPC effectively enhanced the solving efficiency by reducing the dimensionality of the optimization problem, while maintaining robustness during emergencies. The proposed approach provides a prior-knowledge-free and scalable framework for improving the operational resilience of UDSs.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126042"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147831942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Oxygen mass transfer characteristics of different hollow-fiber bubble-free aeration membranes via clean water oxygenation tests under different aeration and measurement modes.","authors":"Zhe Yuan, Chun-Hai Wei, Jing-Su Liu, Zhi-Wei Lian, Jing-Yin Wang, Hua-Rong Yu, Hong-Wei Rong, Zhi-Hui Pan, Zhong-Lin Nie, Ya-Song Chen, Xia Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126028","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Hollow-fiber bubble-free aeration membranes (HBAMs) offer large specific surface area and molecular oxygen transfer, enhancing gas-liquid oxygen transfer efficiency (OTE) and reducing energy consumption, which are promising in membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) for wastewater treatment but lack of systematic studies on oxygen transfer characteristics. Three commercial dense HBAMs were evaluated by clean water oxygenation tests via membrane only under air flow-through aeration using gas-phase method (i.e., membrane lumen inlet and outlet oxygen flow measurement) and liquid-phase method (i.e., bulk-water dissolved oxygen measurement). Both oxygen transfer rate (OTR) and aeration efficiency (AE) from gas-phase measurement were around 7 times more than liquid-phase measurement, which derived from high mass transfer resistance and oxygen oversaturation in viscous sublayer on membrane surface. For air flow-through aeration via constant-power blower, OTR showed linear increase followed by continuous decrease with membrane lumen relative pressure, yielding an optimal range of 7-10 kPa with maximum OTR of 32.8, 144.9, 17.6 gO₂·(m²·d)^-1 for membrane A, B, C. AE and OTE showed negative and positive correlation with lumen pressure. Oxygen permeance (i.e., linear slope of oxygen flux versus absolute oxygen pressure) was 14.2, 41.9, 4.7 GPU for membrane A, B, C. Under pure oxygen dead-end/flow-through aeration, membrane B achieved maximum OTR of 1415.1/1669.8 gO₂·(m²·d)^-1 and oxygen permeance of 27.7/63.2 GPU. Pure oxygen flow-through aeration could sweep the back-diffused water vapor and nitrogen in membrane lumen and fully utilize membrane polymers, both improving oxygen transfer capability. Gas-phase measurement is recommended for HBAMs evaluation and variable-frequency blower is suggested to maximize oxygen transfer performance of HBAMs in MABR application.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126028"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147855535","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Competitive adsorption of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on a gel-type anion-exchange resin: Experiments and modeling.","authors":"M J Ahmadi, Alexis Meservey, Linda M Abriola, Kurt D Pennell","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126044","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Ion-exchange resins (IXR) have been used for a range of water treatment applications, and recently, their ability to remove per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water has gained increasing attention. Since multiple PFAS are typically present in contaminated water, it is important to understand how competitive effects will impact the performance and longevity of IXR. The aim of this study was to investigate the competitive adsorption behavior of six PFAS, perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS), perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS), perfluorohexanoic acid (PFHxA), and perfluorobutanoic acid (PFBA), on a representative gel-type IXR (Amberlite࣪ PSR2 Plus). Single solute batch experiments were conducted to determine baseline adsorption behavior, followed by a series of bi-solute experiments to examine competitive behavior. In single-solute solutions, carboxylates and shorter-chain length compounds (e.g., PFHxA) exhibited greater maximum adsorption capacities compared to sulfonates and longer-chain length compounds (e.g., PFOS). In bi-solute experiments, however, PFOS exhibited preferential adsorption, resulting in significant reductions in adsorption of the competing PFAS. To describe the competitive adsorption of PFAS on gel-type IXR, a mathematical model was developed that incorporates Langmuir-based competitive adsorption and a pore blocking factor, m. The model, which accounts for adsorption on both the exterior and interior domains of IXR, was able to accurately reproduce the observed bi-solute adsorption behavior, where m quantifies the effect of PFOS adsorption on interior site accessibility for short-chain PFAS. Experimental results demonstrate that PFOS can dramatically suppress the adsorption of competing PFAS, attributed to pore blocking that limits access to the interior of gel-type IXR.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126044"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147855495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Metabolic enhancement of AnAOB via enzyme and cofactor regulation for nitrogen removal in wastewater: a critical review.","authors":"Diansen Wang, Xiaonong Zhang, Xingxing Zhang, Peng Wu, Aijie Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.watres.2026.126035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2026.126035","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) is a promising low-carbon and energy-efficient biological nitrogen removal technology, yet its application is constrained by the slow growth, limited metabolic flux, and poor environmental adaptability of anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing bacteria (AnAOB). Recent research has shifted from traditional macroscopic optimization toward micro-scale strategies centered on key enzymes and their regulatory networks. This review systematically examines the AnAOB metabolic framework along the enzyme-cofactor-signaling-application axis, covering the catalytic roles and rate-limiting features of core enzymes including Nitrite reductase (Nir), Hydrazine synthase (Hzs), Hydrazine oxidoreductase (Hzo), and auxiliary enzymes such as nitrate reductase (Nar) and hydroxylamine oxidoreductase (Hao), emphasizing their dependence on metal cofactors like iron and copper and the regulatory role of metal homeostasis in modulating electron transfer and energy coupling. It further explores endogenous signaling networks-including siderophore-mediated metal uptake, quorum sensing (QS), and cyclic nucleotide pathways-in coordinating metabolic activation, biofilm formation, and stress responses. Exogenous strategies involving iron-based materials, biochar, porous carriers, and redox mediators are assessed for their capacity to enhance metal bioavailability, facilitate electron transfer, and stabilize microenvironments, thereby boosting enzymatic activity and engineering performance. These micro-scale mechanisms are evaluated within integrated systems including mainstream anammox, partial nitritation/anammox (PN/A), Comammox-Anammox, and bioelectrochemical processes. Future efforts integrating multi-omics, materials design, and AI-based modeling will enable more precise regulation of AnAOB metabolism, advancing anammox from a nitrogen removal unit toward a carbon-driven platform for nitrogen transformation and resource recovery.</p>","PeriodicalId":443,"journal":{"name":"Water Research","volume":"301 ","pages":"126035"},"PeriodicalIF":12.4,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147832115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"环境科学与生态学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}