A Comprehensive Strategy for Stepwise Design of a Lab PROTOTYPE for the Removal of Emerging Contaminants in Water Using Cyclodextrin Polymers as Adsorbent Material.

The significant environmental issue of water pollution caused by emerging contaminants underscores the imperative for developing novel cleanup methods that are efficient, economically viable, and that are intended to operate at high capacity and under continuous flows at the industrial scale. This study shows the results of the operational design to build a prototype for the retention at lab scale of pollutant residues in water by using as adsorbent material, insoluble polymers prepared by ß-cyclodextrin and epichlorohydrin as a cross-linking agent. Laboratory in-batch tests were run to find out the adsorbent performances against furosemide and hydrochlorothiazide as pollutant models. The initial evaluation concerning the dosage of adsorbent, pH levels, agitation, and concentration of pharmaceutical pollutants enabled us to identify the optimal conditions for conducting the subsequent experiments. The adsorption kinetic and the mechanisms involved were evaluated revealing that the experimental data perfectly fit the pseudo second-order model, with the adsorption process being mainly governed by chemisorption. With KF constant values of 0.044 (L/g) and 0.029 (L/g) for furosemide and hydrochlorothiazide, respectively, and the determination coefficient (R2) being higher than 0.9 for both compounds, Freundlich yielded the most favorable outcomes, suggesting that the adsorption process occurs on heterogeneous surfaces involving both chemisorption and physisorption processes. The maximum monolayer adsorption capacity (qmax) obtained by the Langmuir isotherm revealed a saturation of the ß-CDs-EPI polymer surface 1.45 times higher for furosemide (qmax = 1.282 mg/g) than hydrochlorothiazide (qmax = 0.844 mg/g). Based on these results, the sizing design and building of a lab-scale model were carried out, which in turn will be used later to evaluate its performance working in continuous flow in a real scenario.

Mapping of emerging contaminants in coastal waters research: A bibliometric analysis of research output during 1986-2022.

This bibliometric analysis provides the first overview of the literature on emerging contaminants in coastal waters. Bibexcel, Microsoft Excel, VOSviewer and the bibliometix R package software were used for bibliometric analysis and science mapping. 556 publications, published between 1986 and 2022, were retrieved from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The results showed that this field of research follows Price's law of exponential growth and has exploded since 2001. Authors, journals and institutions followed Lotka's law, and Price's index (43.4 %) showed that the field is far from being obsolete. The most influential institution is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, while authors from China, USA, Japan and Singapore have the most publications and international co-authorships. The leading journal is Marine Pollution Bulletin, with a focus on Environmental Science WoS category. Hot research areas focus on risk assessment of PCBs, organochlorine compounds and personal care products in surface water and wastewater.