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.

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.

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.

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.

Tapping the Oceans provides a detailed analysis of the political and ecological debates facing water desalination in the twenty-first century. Water supplies for cities around the world are undergoing profound geographical, technological and political transformations. Increasingly, water-stressed cities are looking to the oceans to fix unreliable, contested and over-burdened water supply systems. Yet the use of emerging desalination technologies is accompanied by intense debates on their economic cost, governance, environmental impact and poses wider questions for the sustainable and just provision of urban water. Through a series of cutting-edge case studies and multi-subject approaches, this book explores the perspectives, disputes and politics surrounding water desalination on a broad geographical scale. As the first book of its kind, this unique work will appeal to those researching water and infrastructure issues in the fields of political ecology, geography, environmental science and sustainability. Industry and water managers who wish to understand the political debates around desalination technology more fully will also find this an informative read. Contributors include: E. Feitelson, M. Fragkou, S. Gorostiza, A. Loftus, H. March, J. McEvoy, D. Pavon Gamero, D. Sauri, A. Scheba, S. Scheba, E. Swyngedouw, M. Usher, J. Williams

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.

Algae Based Bioelectrochemical Systems for Carbon Sequestration, Carbon Storage, Bioremediation and Bioproduct Generation explores the integration of carbon capture, storage and sequestration technologies with bioelectrochemical fuels cells (BEFC), showing how conventional technologies can be renovated to aid in the reduction in GHG emissions and simultaneously optimize BEFC performance. The book focuses on the integration of algal biogas upgradation with electrochemical systems, providing a guide to the renovation of conventional technologies to combine energy production and carbon sequestration. Chapters discuss the latest advancements in carbon sequestration biocatalyst and microbial platforms and integrations for rapid carbon biotransformations. In addition, the book highlights the potential of algae and chemolithotrophs as candidates for carbon delivery, biocatalyst orientation and architecture for optimal BEFC performance.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

60 Years of the Loeb-Sourirajan Membrane: Principles, New Materials, Modelling, Characterization and Applications bring forth theoretical advances, novel characterization techniques, materials development, advanced treatment processes, and emerging applications of membrane-based technologies. The trigger for writing this book is the 2020, 60th anniversary of the first asymmetric polymeric membrane invented by Dr. Sidney Loeb and Dr. Srinivasa Sourirajan (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) on the breakthrough discovery of the semipermeable membrane for seawater desalination. The book places emphasis on the advances of organic and inorganic membranes in different fields, covering not only the primary application of membranes for water and wastewater treatment but also other applications dealing with energy conversion and storage, organic solvent purification, gas separation, and biomedical processes.

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.

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.

Petroleum Industry Wastewater: Advanced and Sustainable Treatment Methods discusses the status of different approaches and advanced processes involved in the treatment of petrochemical and petroleum industry wastewater. The book focuses on advanced, sustainable, and environmentally friendly technologies for removing toxic pollutants from contaminated waters. The book also explores the environmental aspects and impacts of the petroleum industry discharge wastewater, their effect on aquatic life, and possible ways to deal with these effects. Keeping the global water crisis and fast depletion of natural fresh water in mind, more immediate knowledge, information, implication, and effective utilization of available resources are required than we anticipated. The book brings a wide range of methodologies and perspectives under one roof in a comprehensive manner.