Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences, business and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Advanced Introduction to Water Economics and Policy highlights various aspects of economic and policy considerations as they are applied to water decision-making and evaluation in a comprehensive and clear manner. Key Features: Presents example-based simplified descriptions of water problems and economic principles used to address them Provides examples from different countries and analysis of main water-using sectors Highlights emerging topics in water economics that address water scarcity and discusses economic and policy aspects related to the management of water at local, regional and international scales Researchers and students will appreciate the comprehensive, straightforward presentation of critical information in this Advanced Introduction that does not get lost in technical jargon.

Water Resources Management for Rural Development: Challenges and Mitigation provides an overview of the current challenges of rural water and its management strategies. The content contains practical and theoretical aspects of the water crisis in rural areas in a changing climate era, with an emphasis on recent water crisis research and management strategies. The book's structure contains fundamentals of water resources, pollution, remediation, supply and management strategies. Case studies included provide different water-related issues around the globe, introducing the reader to the paths of reducing the burden on the groundwater and the alternative options for the supply of water in rural areas. Decision-makers and water supply authorities will benefit from this unique resource that comprehensively covers rural water management in ways no comparable book has achieved.

Sustainable Technologies for Remediation of Emerging Pollutants from Aqueous Environment compiles and collates advanced technologies for the purification of water and wastewater. The book covers the biological purification of wastewater, the use of adsorbents for decontamination of water, the role of membrane technology and its composites for removing emerging pollutants, and applications of advanced oxidation processes (AOP) for removal of emerging pollutants. This resource provides a single source solution to academicians and young researchers by assembling the latest information on the application of the conventional and non-conventional in water and wastewater purification.

Concept of Zero Liquid Discharge: Innovations and Advances for Sustainable Wastewater Management provides fundamental and in-depth knowledge on the need for ZLD and conventional and modern technologies, along with the various strategies available to achieve ZLD. The book covers various wastewater treatment technologies that lead to ZLD, integrated wastewater treatment approaches, challenges faced by industries in meeting ZLD goals, and solutions leading to cleaner technologies. In addition, it presents the state-of-the-art technologies and multidisciplinary research underway in the field to address existing challenges and provide future directions. This will be an important reference for postgraduate students in environmental science and engineering as well as high-level researchers, professors, experts and engineers who conduct research and practices in the area of zero liquid discharge (ZLD) approaches, sustainable wastewater management and related fields.

Water, Land, and Forest Susceptibility and Sustainability, Volume 2: Insight Towards Management, Conservation and Ecosystem Services brings an interdisciplinary perspective to solving complex problems in sustainability, utilizing the latest research and technologies, and includes case studies that emphasize the applications of remote sensing, GIS, and image processing for addressing the current state and future needs to achieve sustainability. As forests, land, and water are among the most precious resources on earth, emphasizing the need to conserve them for future generations and, of course, a safe and sustainable planet. The assessment of the susceptibility of all these three precious resources must therefore be addressed to inform their sustainable management. This second volume focuses on environmental management, conservation, and ecosystem services and provides information on forest, land, and water resources, presenting in integrated manner various aspects of their characterization, susceptibility, and sustainability.

Advanced Technologies in Wastewater Treatment: Oily Wastewaters focuses on characteristics and innovative treatment technologies of oily wastewater from various resources. Primary and physical treatment methods such as absorption, adsorption, followed by common techniques like coagulation and fluctuation are discussed in detail. Applications of other advanced methods for the treatment of oily wastewaters like utilization of membranes and stripping gases are covered as well. Finally, novel technologies applied in purification of oily wastewaters such as photocatalytic degradation and biological processes are reviewed and future outlooks and prospects are also illustrated.

Circularity of Plastics: Sustainability, Emerging Materials, and Valorization of Waste Plastic takes an innovative, interdisciplinary approach to circularity and sustainability in plastics, with an emphasis on plastic waste and end-of-life treatment and options for recycling, re-use, valorization and development of biomass-based polymers. The book introduces key concepts of sustainable materials, the circular economy, and lifecycle assessment, and discusses challenges in the valorization of waste. Other sections cover the upcycling of waste plastic into new materials and fuels, with dedicated chapters exploring state-of-the-art techniques for conversion to new sustainable polymers, fuel, fine chemicals and carbon nanomaterials. Emerging technologies used to produce functional polymers from renewable feedstocks, including CO2, biomass, natural polymers, polylactic acid (PLA), and polyhydroxyalkanoate-based materials (PHAs) are then explored, with a final chapter focusing on applications of sustainable materials, challenges, and future perspectives. This is a valuable resource for researchers, scientists, engineers, R&D professionals, and advanced students from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, with an interest in sustainable materials, circularity in plastics, and polymer waste and valorization.

Water Scarcity, Contamination, and Management presents new and updated material, including case studies, step-by-step guidance on key procedures and protocols, and timely topics such as climate change and integrated water resource management. This book is divided into three key sections. Section 1-Water Resource Scarcity-focuses on sustainable development and management of water resources and techniques and methods for improving water use efficiency. Section 2-Contamination of Water Resources-focuses on understanding the quality of water resources, migration of pollutant sources, geochemical processes, groundwater depletion, and seasonal variations in contaminant concentration, water resources' quality status, and associated human health risks. Section 3-Water Resource Management-considers a consolidated and coordinated approach to find the solution to water resource issues. Presenting a comprehensive overview of the water management field, the book serves as a valuable reference for students, professors, scholars, researchers, and consultants in the fields of water resources, civil engineering, environmental science and engineering, and hydrology.

Metals in Water: Global Sources, Significance, and Treatment covers metal pollution in water, where they come from, their effects, and remediation processes. Sections overview heavy metals pollution, including their global health impacts and remediation measures. Geogenic and anthropogenic input of heavy metals in water are described, along with global case studies, step-by-step methods on remediation techniques, different detection sensors, and assessment practices of toxicity of heavy metals. The book focuses on recent research surrounding heavy metals' contamination in water resources and its impact across the globe. Chapters incorporate both theoretical and practical aspects and serve as baseline information for water resources studies. This book is useful for postgraduate students, teachers and researchers working in areas of water resources and pollution, hydrochemistry, environmental remediation and toxicology who are looking to understand the affects metals have on water, the environment and health, and also those looking for methods for remediation.

Plastics and Sustainability: Practical Approaches provides a broad overview of sustainability as applied to plastics, offering a range of opportunities and solutions to be applied in an academic or industrial setting. The book begins by introducing the challenges and opportunities relating to plastics and environmental sustainability. This is followed by detailed eco-profiles organized by polymer category. Subsequent chapters explore various approaches to plastics sustainability, with in-depth coverage of incineration technology for energy recovery, pyrolysis for chemical recovery, blending technology, design, packaging, circular economy, and biopolymers. Finally, international policies are summarized. The book aims to provide a broad source of information and a range of options to readers on how to evaluate and improve the sustainability of plastics, with analyses of the advantages and drawbacks of different technologies and materials. Authored by two professional engineers with substantial experience in industry and consultancy, this is a valuable resource for all those looking for a wide-ranging overview of sustainability as applied to plastics, including researchers and advanced students from a range of materials science and engineering disciplines, and engineers, manufacturers, scientists, and R&D professionals from a range of industries.

Advanced Machine Learning Techniques includes the theoretical foundations of modern machine learning, as well as advanced methods and frameworks used in modern machine learning. Handbook of HydroInformatics, Volume II: Advanced Machine Learning Techniques presents both the art of designing good learning algorithms, as well as the science of analyzing an algorithm's computational and statistical properties and performance guarantees. The global contributors cover theoretical foundational topics such as computational and statistical convergence rates, minimax estimation, and concentration of measure as well as advanced machine learning methods, such as nonparametric density estimation, nonparametric regression, and Bayesian estimation; additionally, advanced frameworks such as privacy, causality, and stochastic learning algorithms are also included. Lastly, the volume presents Cloud and Cluster Computing, Data Fusion Techniques, Empirical Orthogonal Functions and Teleconnection, Internet of Things, Kernel-Based Modeling, Large Eddy Simulation, Patter Recognition, Uncertainty-Based Resiliency Evaluation, and Volume-Based Inverse Mode. This is an interdisciplinary book, and the audience includes postgraduates and early-career researchers interested in: Computer Science, Mathematical Science, Applied Science, Earth and Geoscience, Geography, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Water Science, Atmospheric Science, Social Science, Environment Science, Natural Resources, Chemical Engineering.

Emerging Techniques for Treatment of Toxic Metals from Wastewater explores the different physical and chemical methods that can be used to remove toxins from wastewater, including adsorption, solvent extraction, ion exchange, precipitation, filtration and photocatalytic degradation. Bringing together contributions from leading experts in the field, the book covers each of the different techniques in detail, combining emergent research outcomes with fundamental theoretical concepts to provide a clear appraisal of the different techniques available, along with their applications. It is an essential recourse for researchers, industrialists and students concerned with the remediation of toxic metals from water and wastewater.

Sodium Alginate-based Nanomaterials for Wastewater Treatment offers detailed coverage of fundamentals and recent advances in sodium alginate-based nanomaterials for wastewater treatment. The book provides a detailed overview of the development and application of nanomaterials-based sodium alginate so that new methods can be put in place for efficient wastewater treatment. This includes illustrating how nanomaterials have enabled the formation of nanocomposites or blends of sodium alginate with other compounds like chitosan for the effective removal of heavy metals from wastewater. This important reference source for materials scientists and environmental engineers comprehensively covers nanotechnology applications in efficient wastewater treatment solutions.

Wastewaters generated from food production and agricultural activities are a source of environmental pollution due to their huge amount of nutrients, organic carbon, nitrogenous organics, inorganics, suspended and dissolved solids, and high biochemical and chemical oxygen demands. Advanced Technologies in Wastewater Treatment: Food Processing Industry provides an update on emerging technologies including oxidative and anaerobic processes (flotation, coagulation, sedimentation, filtration, adsorption, primary settling, secondary activated sludge, anaerobic digestion), ion exchange, membrane-based operations, adsorption/bio-sorption and advanced biological treatment to provide safe and clean water as well as to recover primary resources from food processing wastewaters. In addition, the integration of these technologies will be also considered in the logic of the process intensification strategy. Innovative and affordable solutions are proposed in the field of fruit and vegetable processing industry, fishing industry, meat and poultry industry, dairy production, oil and fat processing.

Desalination Technologies: Design and Operation sets the scene for desalination technologies as a long-term solution to freshwater demand by analyzing the current demand for water, available water resources and future predicted demand. The book captures recent developments in thermal desalination (multistage flash desalination, multi-effect evaporation, vapor compression), membrane desalination (forward osmosis, reverse osmosis, pressure retarded, electrodialysis, membrane distillation, ultra-, nano-, and micro-filtration), and alternative processes such as freezing and ion exchange. Both dynamic and steady state models (from short cut, simple, to detail) of various desalination processes are discussed. The book is intended for (under)graduate students in chemical engineering and postgraduate researchers and industrial practitioners in desalination.

Biodegradability of Conventional Plastics: Opportunities, Challenges, and Misconceptions brings together innovative research on the biodegradability of conventional plastics, providing an extensive overview of approaches and strategies that may be implemented, while also highlighting other methods for alleviating the eventual environmental impact of plastics. The book begins by providing a lifecycle assessment of plastics, the environmental impact of plastic waste, and the factors that affect the biodegradability of plastics. The different categories and terminologies surrounding bio-based plastics and biodegradable plastics are then defined and explained in detail, as are the issues surrounding bioplastics. Other sections discuss biodegradability, approaches for enhanced biodegradability of various major types of plastics, including polyolefins, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene, poly(vinyl chloride), automotive plastics and composites, and agricultural plastic waste. The final part of the book focuses on further techniques and emerging areas, including the utilization of chemical additives, nanomaterials, the role of microbes in terms of microbial degradation and microbial attaching, revalorization of plastic waste through industrial biotechnology, and future opportunities and challenges.

Industrial wastewater contains a large variety of compounds, such as hazardous organic pollutants, heavy metals, salts and nutrients, which makes its treatment challenging. On the other hand, the sewage treatment with existing technologies is not cost-effective due to high energy demand and contributes to greenhouse gas emission. Thus, the use of conventional water treatment methods is neither sustainable nor always effective. In this sense, BESs has emerged as a promising technology to treat complex industrial wastewater with a sustainable manner. Development in Wastewater Treatment Research and Processes: Bioelectrochemical Systems for Wastewater Management analyses and discusses the potential of microbial and electrochemical based hybrid processes for the treatment of complex industrial wastewater along with the recovery of valuable compounds and water reutilization. The most significant advantages of BES are high effectiveness, low toxicity, gentle operation conditions, environmentally friendly treatment without sludge accumulation and energy conservation. Bioelectrochemical systems (BES) are emerging as an exciting platform to convert chemical energy of organic wastes into electricity or hydrogen or value-added chemical commodities. In addition, recent and future trends in BES are highlighted.

Novel Approaches towards Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery Technologies discusses various cost-efficient aspects of wastewater treatment along with resource recovery options. The book covers biological wastewater treatment, the application of membranes and their modifications, advanced oxidation techniques, and the application of nanoparticles for the enhancement of performance as well as various integrated technologies for resource recovery along with pilot scale potentials. The book covers both domestic and industrial wastewaters and provides resources for sustainable solutions. It provides the basic fundamentals and recent updated data. Case studies are included to give the glimpse of the real-world application. Similarly, pilot scale studies are considered for real life implementation of the concept.

Treatment and Reuse of Sewage Sludge: An Innovative Approach for Wastewater Treatment: Developments in Waste Water Treatment Research and Processes series, focuses on the exploitation of various treatment technologies and their use to treat sewage sludge to detoxify/stabilize toxic and hazardous contaminants and restore contaminated sites, which lacks in a more comprehensive manner in currently existing titles on similar topics. The book includes current beneficial sludge utilization practices such as land application, energy recovery, use as an alternative fuel source, use as a construction material and resource recovery from sewage sludge using emerging technologies. In addition, the book includes numerous current and advanced sewage sludge treatment and reuse technologies and associated microbes to effectively treat and manage hazardous industrial wastes/or wastewater pollutants for environmental safety, sustainability and public health protection. The book is a reference for all researchers working in the field of environmental engineering, bioengineering, waste management, and related fields.

Classic Soft-Computing Techniques is the first volume of the three, in the Handbook of HydroInformatics series. Through this comprehensive, 34-chapters work, the contributors explore the difference between traditional computing, also known as hard computing, and soft computing, which is based on the importance given to issues like precision, certainty and rigor. The chapters go on to define fundamentally classic soft-computing techniques such as Artificial Neural Network, Fuzzy Logic, Genetic Algorithm, Supporting Vector Machine, Ant-Colony Based Simulation, Bat Algorithm, Decision Tree Algorithm, Firefly Algorithm, Fish Habitat Analysis, Game Theory, Hybrid Cuckoo-Harmony Search Algorithm, Honey-Bee Mating Optimization, Imperialist Competitive Algorithm, Relevance Vector Machine, etc.It is a fully comprehensive handbook providing all the information needed around classic soft-computing techniques. This volume is a true interdisciplinary work, and the audience includes postgraduates and early career researchers interested in Computer Science, Mathematical Science, Applied Science, Earth and Geoscience, Geography, Civil Engineering, Engineering, Water Science, Atmospheric Science, Social Science, Environment Science, Natural Resources, and Chemical Engineering.

Environmental Sustainability and Industries identifies and discusses critical areas related to environmentally conscious industrial development of products and services that may support more sustainable and equitable societies. This book addresses pollution prevention by referring to the use of processes, practices, and materials that reduce or eliminate the generation of pollutants at the source of production, more efficient use of raw materials, energy, water or other resources, or by conserving natural resources by maintaining clean production. It explains industrial energy efficiency as the most cost-effective use of energy in manufacturing processes, reducing its wastage as well as the total consumption of primary energy resources. Life cycle assessment is used as an analytical method to quantify environmental impacts, focusing on environmental considerations concerning process design and optimization, and including various sustainable manufacturing parameters in the context of industrial processes and proposes a classification of identified parameters to evaluate and optimize the manufacturing performances. The book also dives into industrial ecology, investigating how, where, and why environmental improvements can be made to develop a sustainable industry, meeting the needs of current generations without sacrificing the needs of the future ones. This book analyzes a company's environmental, social, and economic performance and their interrelationships, emphasizing the importance of identifying and understanding causal relationships between alternative approaches to action and their impact on financial and nonfinancial performance. It concludes with a view on the future of sustainable industrial systems stressing change as a joint effort of scientists, governments, people in business, and academicians.

Advances in Oil-Water Separation: A Complete Guide for Physical, Chemical, and Biochemical Processes discusses a broad variety of chemical, physical and biochemical processes, including skimming, membrane separation, adsorption, onsite chemical reactions, burning and usage of suitable microbial strains for onsite degradation of oil. It critically reviews all current developments in oil-water separation processes and technologies, identifies gaps and illuminates the scope for future research and development in the field. This book provides researchers, engineers and environmental professionals working in oil recovery and storage with solutions for disposal of waste oil and separation of oil from water in a sustainable, environmentally-friendly way. As the book provides a complete state-of-art overview on oil-water separation technologies, it will also ease literature searches on oil-water separation technologies.

Development in Wastewater Treatment Research and Processes: Microbial Ecology, Diversity and Functions of Ammonia Oxidizing Bacteria covers up-to-date research on ammonia oxidizing bacteria and their application for the removal of ammonia nitrogen from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), discussing remaining gaps in their biology and functions. In this sense, this book features the application of the newly developed omics tools in order to develop less energy intensive and cost-effective biological processes for nitrogen removal from WWTPs. This makes this book an essential and unique book for advanced students, research scientists, environmental agencies and industries involved in wastewater treatment.

Natural Organic Matter in Water: Characterization, Treatment Methods, and Climate Change Impact, Second Edition focuses on advanced filtration and treatment options, as well as processes for reducing disinfection by-products, making it an essential resource on the latest breakthroughs in the characterization, treatment and removal of natural organic matter (NOM) from drinking water. Based on the editor's years of research and field experience, the book covers general parameters, isolation and concentration, fractionation, composition and structural analysis, and biological testing, along with removal methods such as inorganic coagulants, polyelectrolytes and composite coagulants. In addition, sections cover electrochemical and membranes removal methods such as electrocoagulation, electrochemical oxidation, microfiltration and ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and membrane fouling. This book is a valuable guide for engineers and researchers looking to integrate methods, processes and technologies to achieve desired affects.