Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology blog

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology is pleased to announce that Dr Ming Xie has joined the journal as an Associate Editor. Ming is a Lecturer of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Bath, and an Industrial Fellow by the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Ming’s research is based on membrane technology relating to the areas of food, energy, and water. He was the recipient of the Australia Cheung Kong Endeavour Award in 2018. Dr Xie has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals. His research has attracted more than £15M research funding from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society, British Council and Leverhulme Trust. He also serves in the Technical Advisory Committee for IChemE Sustainability Hub.

As an Associate Editor, Ming welcomes submissions in the areas of membranes, nanofiltration, osmosis and other similar topics relating to water treatment. If you have work that would be relevant to Ming’s expertise, or the journal more generally, submit now to Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology.

Dr. Lin received his Ph.D. from the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University (USA). He is currently working as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering. His research focuses on development of advanced materials and catalysts for energy and environmental applications. In the past few years, he has been becoming one of leading experts for environmental applications of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and their derivatives. He has also served as editors and editorial members for more than 10 journals. Dr. Lin has co-authored more than 365 SCI journal papers with a H-index of 58 and more than 12700 citations. From February 2024, Prof. Lin will join the Institute of Analytic and Environmental Sciences at National Tsing Hua University (Hsinchu City, Taiwan).

Read Kun-Yi Andrew Lin ’s Emerging Investigator article “Enhancing Degradation of Ciprofloxacin in Water using Oxone activated by Urchin-like Cubic and Hollow-structured Cobalt@N-doped Carbon prepared via Etching-Engineering” and read more about him in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on Enhancing Degradation of Ciprofloxacin in Water using Oxone activated by Urchin-like Cubic and Hollow-structured Cobalt@N-doped Carbon prepared via Etching-Engineering: A. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

As I was trained as an environmental chemical engineer, I have been focusing the development of functional materials to respond to environmental issues and challenges from chemical and material perspectives. In my very first publication, I integrated organic-inorganic hybrid materials to combine advantages of organic soft matters and inorganic solid particles for capturing CO2. Similarly, for affording synergistic effects, the current study further utilizes benefits of inorganic metals and organic carbonaceous substrates to formulate this hybrid material comprised of cobalt embedded onto N-doped carbon with an intriguing hollow morphology in order to maximize active surfaces of catalysts.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

At this moment, I am quite fascinated by metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that are a versatile platform for various applications. MOFs can be also tuned to become tools for dealing with conventional and emerging environmental problems.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

While designing and developing nanomaterials is interesting and promising, practical applications using nanomaterials would still encounter challenges in reality. Therefore, it is crucial to consider both reality and fancy to develop materials that can be feasibly implemented and operated in practical applications and still retain advantages of nanoscale features.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

The most challenging part of my current research is to integrate fundamental/theoretical perspectives with experimental investigations as the quantum computational chemistry is increasingly adopted as a useful tool to elucidate materials sciences. However, proper applications of quantum computational chemistry for understanding materials science and relationships between materials and reactions would be still quite challenging.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

I will plan to attend conferences related to chemistry and chemical engineering. Therefore, it may be possible to meet up together at conferences held by American Chemical Society or Royal Society of Chemistry.

How do you spend your spare time?

I like to spend my spare time hanging out with my family to explore natural scenes and I also like to cook to prepare nice cuisines for my family!

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

If I were not a scientist, I probably would be an industrial designer to design vehicles or shoes to exercise my creativity and imagination.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

“No pain, no gain!” The academia is actually very competitive and you are competing with so many talented peers. Therefore, you need to really devote yourself and work hard to achieve your goals!

Jeseth Delgado Vela, PhD is Assistant Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Howard University. Her research applies tools in molecular biology to develop sustainable and cost-efficient urban water treatment. She received her PhD and master’s degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Michigan. She received her bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a recipient of the Ford Foundation Dissertation Award (2016), was named an Early Career Research Fellow by the Gulf Research Program in 2021, and was awarded an NSF CAREER Award in 2022. In Fall 2023, she will join the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University.

Read Jeseth Delgado Vela’s Emerging Investigator article “The role of phage lifestyle on wastewater microbial community structure and function: insights from diverse microbial environments” and read more about her in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on The role of phage lifestyle on wastewater microbial community structure and function: insights from diverse microbial environments. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article? 

My first article discussed control of biological nitrogen removal systems in wastewater treatment. My independent research career has focused on developing novel ways to control microbial communities. I am currently focused on studying microbial community molecular signals, including signals that phages use, and how engineers may hack these signals for bioprocess improvements.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment? 

I am excited about applying bioinformatic methods to evaluate phage communities and auxiliary metabolic genes in wastewater microbial communities. I’m energized by just how hard this line of research is, there really are a lot of unknowns on the role and ecology of phage in wastewater.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research? 

I think there is a lot of interest in controlling microbial communities using phages (phage therapy for wastewater). It’s an exciting concept, but I think we need to better understand the hosts, ecology, and function of phages in wastewater treatment.

What do you find most challenging about your research? 

We have a lot of bioinformatic tools that we can apply, but there are so many unknowns in environmental microbial communities. It can be frustrating to have the majority of your data be ‘unknown proteins’ or ‘unknown organisms.’ But, this is also a motivating aspect of the research—there is so much left to understand!

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you? 

I’ll be at AEESP in Boston in June.

How do you spend your spare time? 

I love outdoor entertaining of friends and family. If you visit me and the weather is nice enough, there will be a grill party. I also am trying to grow veggies to varying degrees of success.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist? 

Truthfully, I probably would be a practicing environmental engineer. If I were more artistic, I would choose to be an architect.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists? 

I think it is often easy for me to lose sight of what a privilege it is to get to think about solutions for a living. I often cope with the demands of building my scientific career by reminding myself how lucky I am to explore my curiosity, collaborate, and continuously learn.

Dr. Kyoung-Yeol Kim is an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental & Sustainable Engineering at the University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY). He received his Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering at Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology (GIST, South Korea) in 2014. Prior to his appointment at the University at Albany, SUNY, Dr. Kim worked at Pennsylvania State University as a post-doctoral research fellow. Dr. Kim has published 51 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, and his publications have drawn > 3,900 citations (h index: 33, google scholar citation) to date. Dr. Kim is now serving as an early career advisory board member for the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters, and he was recognized as an Outstanding Reviewer in 2018 for Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology. Dr. Kim’s research group (Kim Research Group @ UAlbany) is now conducting multiple research projects including energy and resource recoveries (electricity, hydrogen, nutrients, etc.) from waste streams using (bio)electrochemical systems, and also per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) treatment using electrochemical processes.

Read Kyoung-Yeol’s Emerging Investigator article “Impacts of aeration flow rates and bubble sizes on PFOA/PFOS removal in electrocoagulation” and read more about him in the interview below:

Your recent EmergingInvestigator Series paper focuses on Impacts of aeration flow rates and bubble sizes on PFOA/PFOS removal in electrocoagulation. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

Electrochemical reactions are everywhere in this world so we can use electrochemical principles to solve the problems in the environmental engineering field. This article is a story about one electrochemical process (electrocoagulation) to remove per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water. Our previous work to control PFAS using electrocoagulation focused on reducing energy requirements. We initially examined a novel electrocoagulation system with an air-cathode to utilize oxygen as an electron acceptor without aeration. In that study, we concluded that aeration could be essential to secure the high PFAS removal efficiency by electrocoagulation. Thus, we have further worked on this concept to explore how aeration affects PFAS removal as well as other performances in electrocoagulation, We have examined different types of bubbles with various flow rates to systematically examine the impacts of aeration in the electrocoagulation system.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

Aeration is not common in conventional electrocoagulation. There are several studies that employed aeration to improve the oxidation of target contaminants, but not many researchers tried to use oxygen as an electron acceptor. Also, previous electrocoagulation studies only focused on the role of metal hydroxide flocs on PFAS removal. It was a reasonable approach, but we conclude that aeration is also crucial to control PFAS in the electrocoagulation system. This work is the first study that systematically examined the role of aeration (or flotation) in electrocoagulation for PFAS control.

 In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Adding aeration to electrocoagulation can reduce the intrinsic energy requirement by replacing the hydrogen evolution reaction with an oxygen reduction reaction (which is much more thermodynamically favorable) at the cathode. However, adding aeration will also increase the energy cost. At this point, aeration for electrocoagulation should be optimized to minimize the entire energy consumption. Also, a continuous flow study with realistic water samples should be further examined at a larger scale.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

I have been working on various electrochemical processes to date, electrochemical processes are usually considered sustainable approaches since electrochemical processes are usually environmentally friendly compared to other existing chemical processes. Most of the electrochemical processes are facing the practicability issues like scale-up and running under more realistic conditions. To overcome these barriers, materials and reactor design still need to be improved to maintain reasonable performances at a larger scale.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

I am going to present this work at the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) conference in Boston in June 2023.

How do you spend your spare time?

As a father of two little sons, I have to spend my spare time with them in the playground, backyard, playroom, etc. I am sure this applies to other parents with kids too.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I might have become a professional baseball player. Not sure if I could play in MLB though. There are a lot to learn from baseball (and other sports as well).

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

I am not in a position that can give advice to others, but here’s one thing. Every person has their own pace. For example, some people receive (so-called) prominent grants or awards at a very early stage but some people don’t. However, it doesn’t mean that those slow starters are doing something long. As long as you think you are working hard, do not compare yourself to others. You will reach your goals at some point.

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology are glad to welcome Luca Vezzaro (Technical University of Denmark) to the Advisory Board!

Luca has been working on modelling water quality in integrated urban water systems since the start of his PhD project in 2007, with a special focus on trace contaminants (micropollutants). This topic is intertwined with identification and quantification of sources of uncertainty, which has also been a common thread in his work.

His current research focus also includes methods for integrated online control and operations of urban water systems (including Model Predictive Control), validation and assimilation of water quality in sewers, and estimation of the fate of trace contaminants in circular water systems.

Recently, we launched a Data-intensive water systems management and operation themed issue, which is open for submissions until September 10th 2021. This issue is Guest Edited by Branko Kerkez (University of Michigan, USA), Kris Villez (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) and ESWRT Editorial Board member Eveline Volcke (Ghent University, Belgium).

We’d like to invite you to attend a free live webinar with the Guest Editors, to hear them speak about the scope of this issue and answer your questions about where your research might fit into this topic.

Our Editor-in-Chief, Paige Novak, tells you more below:

“We always strive to make the publishing process clear, equitable, and transparent, and our themed issues are no exception. We are particularly excited about our themed issue on Data-intensive water systems management and operation, which is currently open for submissions, but realize that although this topic is of great interest for many of you, the topic can be confusing. To address this, on July 28^th 2021 at 10am ET/3pm BST, we will hold a brief webinar that we invite you to attend (or watch the recorded version) in which our Guest Editors, Kris Villez, Branko Kerkez, and Eveline Volcke, will hold a panel discussion to introduce the theme of the issue, describe the types of papers that they are looking for, and generally help researchers submit their best and most exciting work to this themed issue. We invite you to attend or watch the recorded version and think about how your work can fit into this issue and check back in early 2022 to read what promises to be a very exciting collection of papers.”

Click here to register to attend this webinar

Can’t attend? Click here to access the recording after the event

Click here to submit your question in advance

We are delighted to announce that Joel Ducoste (North Carolina State University) has joined the Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology Advisory Board.

Dr. Joel Ducoste is a Professor in the Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering Department at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Interim Associate Dean for Faculty Advancement.  He holds a B.S. (1988) and M.Eng. (1989) in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering (1996) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Ducoste is a board certified environmental engineering member with the American Academy of Environmental Engineers and Scientists and is a recognized expert in modeling water and wastewater treatment processes using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

His current research interests include physico-chemical processes in water treatment, computational fluid dynamics modeling, water/wastewater process optimization, wastewater sewer collection system sustainability, renewable energy, plant biosystems engineering, and solid waste process modeling.

He is a respected researcher and productive scholar with over 85 peer reviewed journal publications and another 90 peer reviewed conference proceedings and research reports. Dr. Ducoste has received a number of awards including: an NSF Career Award, a Fulbright fellowship, Visiting Professorships at Ghent University, South East University, and Yangzhou University, NC State mentoring awards, and most recently, elected Fellow of the Water Environment Federation. He has served on EPA Science Advisory Boards and 2020-2021 President of the Association of the Environmental Engineering and Science Professors. Dr. Ducoste also spent 5 years in industry at CH2M Hill as a senior process engineer and as an advance-manufacturing engineer at GE Aircraft Engines.

Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology seeks your high-impact research for our upcoming Themed Issue on Data-intensive water systems management and Operation

Guest Edited by Branko Kerkez (University of Michigan, USA), Kris Villez (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) and Eveline Volcke (Ghent University, Belgium)

The water sector increasingly looks at intensified instrumentation, data collection and automation as tools for daily use. Still, a massive opportunity remains in fully embracing emerging methods and technologies such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, machine learning, low-cost sensor hardware, and edge and cloud computing. Indeed, sensing and automation technology has already infiltrated many facets of society today. As such, the time is ripe to evaluate the role of novel technologies for systems monitoring, diagnostics, and automation of aquatic processes and large-scale water systems. When leveraged, the water sector will do more with less.

In this special issue we seek to publish articles that report a significant advance in the theory, understanding, practice or application of emerging techniques and
technologies, including:

• Instrumentation, including state-of-the-art sensors and novel sensor concepts
• Data analytics and machine learning
• Low-cost and energy-efficient hardware for computation, and automation
• Advances in decision support systems
• Real-time monitoring and control
• Autonomy & Automation
• Privacy and cybersecurity
• Integration of data-intensive techniques, such as scale, model-based tools for
  real-time operation and management

The reported studies should be rooted in applications across aquatic science and engineering, including but not limited to:

• Chemical and microbial contaminants
• Water distribution and wastewater collection
• Stormwater infrastructure, green and gray
• Potable reuse
• Residue management
• Watersheds

All submitted manuscripts will undergo initial assessment and peer review as per the usual standards of the journal. Please quote “EWData21” in the “Comments to the Editor” section during the submission process.

Click here to find out more

Submissions due: 10th September 2021

Submit your work now: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/esw 

Niveen Ismail is currently an assistant professor in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, an all-women’s liberal arts college. She received her MS (2011) and PhD (2015) in Environmental Engineering from Stanford University. She received her MS in Biology (2010) from Temple University and B.S. in Chemical Engineering (2003) from New Jersey Institute of Technology. The Ismail research lab examines the use of natural systems to improve water quality with a focus on the understanding the interaction of filter feeders with aquatic contaminants.

Read her Emerging Investigator article “Emerging investigator series: interacting effects of environmental factors on Daphnia magna removal of Escherichia coli from wastewater” and read more about her in the interview below:

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on removal of E. colifrom wastewater with zooplankton. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

My research interests have expanded quite a bit with respect to the suite of contaminants we study in my lab, which now includes microbial pollutants, metals, microplastics, and nanoparticles. This particular area of research examining zooplankton interaction with microbial pollutants has evolved over the years to include more complex matrices and experimental designs that better mimic environmental systems.  My very first published paper looked at PCB maternal transfer in diamondback terrapins. I have been interested in aquatic contaminants since I started conducting research as an undergraduate.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

It’s hard to pick one specific topic, but I am really excited to have my undergraduate students back in lab after a long hiatus due the pandemic closures. Since I am a faculty member at a primarily undergraduate institution, my undergraduate students are the heart of my lab and are critical to the success of my research. With regards to specific research, we have restarted our work looking at various zooplankton species interactions with phages/viruses. We also are about to scale up our work examining the impact of silver nanoparticles on zooplankton to a mesocosm level. It’s always exciting to have experimental work progress from microcosm/batch scale to mesocosm scale and see how the kinetics change as we consider different variables and move closer to environmentally realistic conditions.

In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

Like many other scientists researching water technology, trying to improve water quality is a driving motivator behind all the research I do. Specific to my research focus, zooplankton are such critical species to natural treatment systems, but so little is known about their overall contributions to improving water quality and the effects of contaminants on their ability to filter feed. Ultimately, to effectively implement natural treatment systems, we need to be able to model and predict all the different factors that impact system performance. Often zooplankton grazing is excluded from inactivation and fate/transport models, so the mechanisms and the kinetics related to these filter feeders need to be elucidated.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

Balancing experimental specificity of working with a particular zooplankton species with broad applicability to the water treatment sector is a challenge we think about a lot. There is also the logistics of working with different biological species that can be challenging when it comes to maintaining cultures and dealing with culture crashes at the most inopportune moments.

In which upcoming conferences or events (online or in person) may our readers meet you?

I always look forward to attending AEESP and GRC Environmental Science: Water conferences. I also usually attend SETAC and ACS conferences.

How do you spend your spare time?

Right now, I have a 6-month-old so she is the focus of my time outside of work. I do still prioritize finding time to run in the woods almost every day and recently have tried to embrace New England winters by starting to cross country ski.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I always loved science so it is hard to imagine a different profession. I toyed with idea of being a veterinarian based on my love of animals so perhaps I would reconsider that option. Also, I could envision doing something related to running which I am extremely passionate about, but not sure what that would actually be.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Give yourself time to get into a rhythm in lab and do not be discouraged if progress seems to be very slow (or non-existent). Also take the time to truly connect with your students and build a positive lab culture.

We are delighted to share with you a hand-picked selection of papers recently published in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology (ESWRT).

HOT papers – as recommended by our Editors & Reviewers

Amyloid hybrid membranes for removal of clinical and nuclear radioactive wastewater
Bolisetty, N. M. Coray, A. Palika, G. A. Prenosil and R. Mezzenga

Emerging investigator series: bacterial opportunistic pathogen gene markers in municipal drinking water are associated with distribution system and household plumbing characteristic
Sarah Jane Haig et al

Livestock manure improved antibiotic resistance gene removal during co-treatment of domestic wastewater in an anaerobic membrane bioreactor
Esther Ge Lou, Moustapha Harb, Adam L. Smith and Lauren B. Stadler

Read more HOT papers at rsc.li/eswrt-hot

Reviews – timely and insightful overviews of water research and technologies

Microplastics removal in wastewater treatment plants: a critical review
Paul U. Iyare, Sabeha K. Ouki and Tom Bond

Biogenic nanomaterials for photocatalytic degradation and water disinfection: a review
Erick R. Bandala, Danijela Stanisic and Ljubica Tasic

Plasmonic metal nitrides for solar-driven water evaporation
Matthew J. Margeson and Mita Dasog

Read more Reviews at rsc.li/eswrt-reviews

Open Access – read for free!

Regularized regression analysis for the prediction of virus inactivation efficiency by chloramine disinfection
Syun-suke Kadoya, Osamu Nishimura, Hiroyuki Kato and Daisuke Sano

Ammonia removal from mixed dewatering liquors by three different deammonification technologies
Ochs, B. D. Martin, E. Germain, T. Stephenson, M. C. M. van Loosdrecht and A. Soares

Removal of contaminants from canal water using microwave synthesized zero valent iron nanoparticles
Shad, M.-F. A. Belinga-Desaunay-Nault, Sohail, N. Bashir and I. Lynch

Read more Open Access content at rsc.li/eswrt-oa

**************************************************

We hope you enjoy reading these papers!

Click here to return to the journal homepage