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Background: Many antibiotics were widely used as medication based on their distinctive features. Among them, sulphonamides were commonly and mainly used for bacterial treatment, however, the recalcitrant nature makes them difficult to dispose of. Hence, their interaction with the environment and analytic technique requires considerable attention globally. Objective: Therefore, this review aimed to provide detailed discussion about environmental as well as human health behaviour and analytic techniques corresponding to sulphonamides. Methods: Various results and discussion were extracted from technical journals and books published by different researchers from all over the world. The cited bibliographic references were intentionally investigated in order to extract relevant information related to proposed work. Results: In this review, the determination techniques such as UV-spectroscopy, Enthalpimetry, Immunosensor, Chromatography, Chemiluminescence, Photoinduced fluorometric determination, Capillary electrophoresis for sulphonamide determination were discussed in detail. Among them, High performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and UV-spectroscopy was effective and extensively used for screening sulphonamide. Conclusion: Knowing the quantification and behaviour of sulphonamide in aqueous solution is mandatory to opt the suitable wastewater treatment required. Hence, choosing appropriate high precision and feasible screening techniques is necessary, which can be attained with this review.

In recent times, three-dimensional (3D) electrochemical technology was seen as efficient treatment in treating wastewater. 3D-system was found to be more superior to two-dimensional (2D) system due to its large surface area and short mass transfer distance. This paper mainly focuses on the major main electrodes as well as particle electrodes utilised so far. The mechanism involved in 3D electrochemical reactor, its advantages and the structure of this 3D system have been discussed. The influencing operating parameter such as pH, current density, circulation flow, inter-electrode distance, hydraulic retention time, initial pollutant concentration, particle electrode dosage was discussed. The synergic effects due to the involvement of particle electrode were also discussed. The usage of 3D-system as pre-treatment as well as combined system was presented in detail.

Removal of heavy metals from wastewaters using microalgae is gaining interest because microalgae also assimilate carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. Here, we review algal metabolism and cultivation; algal biomass conversion to biodiesel, bioethanol, biohydrogen, methane, electricity and fertilizers; and removal of metals with microalgae. The mixotrophic approach enables the effective treatment of both organic and inorganic wastes in water. For cultivation, photobioreactors are found efficient due to the control of operational conditions. Bioremediation of heavy metals by physiochemical processes appears to be more efficient than algal uptake.

Lab-scale hybrid loop airlift photobioreactor (HLALPBR) was used to culture microalgae Scenedesmus abundans in domestic wastewater. The highest biomass productivity of 209 mg L−1 d−1 and concentration of 3.55 g L−1 were achieved. S abundans could eradicate chemical oxygen demand, dissolved inorganic nitrogen, and dissolved inorganic phosphorus by 80.19%, 90.73% and 86.31% respectively from domestic wastewater. Later, hydrothermal liquefaction of algal biomass yielded 35.5 wt% of bio-oil. Carbon mass balance between various product streams showed that per g of algae about 0.46, 0.15, 0.963 and 0.35 g of CO2 was sequestered by bio-char, bio-gas, bio-oil and post-HTL wastewater product streams respectively. Since bio-oil has low N and O content and higher heating value of 36.52 MJ/kg, those can be upgraded to transportation fuel. The conversion of S. abundans to bio-char as a carbon sink has been proposed for reducing emissions and increasing the sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

In current era, the presence of chromium in aquatic environment are increasing diversely due to evolution activities. Chromium exist in various oxidation state and among them hexavalent chromium is viewed as natural contamination with high poisonous quality and portability. The release of chromium and its particulates go into oceanic medium by the effluents released from ventures like tanneries, materials, mining, coloring, printing, photographic and medicinal industries. The clean removal of chromium from industrial water/wastewater treatment process is a challenge due to improper technologies selection from economical, technical and environmental aspects. This synoptic review focus on chromium occurrence, its toxicity, impacts on environments, health effects and also deals with the emerging techniques such as electrocoagulation , adsorption , biological treatment , membrane treatment , photocatalysis prospects and drawbacks in detail. The problems such as cost, transitional compound toxicity, treatment efficiency are listed out in this research. The paper critically highlights the hybrid technologies of electrochemical and biological treatment for cleaner removal of chromium to carry over future research.

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) performance may get degraded due to component degradation, aging, thermal variations of the environment and so on. Performance degradation should be corrected when the spaceborne SAR is in orbit. Calibration is implemented on the radar imagery by radiometric calibration which gives the relationship between digital number and backscattering coefficient. Radiometric calibration gives calibration constant, which is the key parameter to convert the SAR digital numbers into backscattering coefficient. With radiometrically calibrated image, the performance of one sensor can be compared with other sensors through multiple acquisitions to improve quantitative analysis of SAR performance. Radiometric calibration is done by ground deployed corner reflectors (CR). CRs have well-known radar cross sections, and hence, the derived radar cross sections from the SAR image are compared with the theoretical RCS to characterize the SAR sensor. An attempt is made to study the effectiveness of calibration, using different combination of CRs (various sizes and shapes) by deploying CR’s in the Jain Global institutions—JGI global Campus, Jakkasandra, Bangalore, and average sigma-naught (σ0) is estimated through multiple acquisitions of Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched by European Space agency in 2014, having SAR as a payload. Sentinel-1A is an open source system which operates in four different modes with different resolution schemes. In this paper, Interferometric Wide swath mode of Sentinel-1A is used as that particular mode of acquisition is available over Jain Global campus. This paper presents the general criteria for selection of CRs and the measures taken during deployment. Integral method is used to estimate the calibration coefficient of Sentinel SAR data with different interpolation factors.

The advancement in the bioelectrochemical system (BES) gathered increasing attention in the removal, recovery, and remediation of nutrients in industrial wastewater treatment. BES is unique in which electrical energy is obtained by the conversion of chemical energy (and vice versa) by utilizing microbes, algae, etc., and the design of BES also lies in the recovery of nutrients from industrial wastewater using the biological approach. The use of a variety of enzymes and microbial catalysts and nonusage of precious metals as catalysts and operations under limited conditions make BES more efficient than conventional fuel cells. Phosphorus and nitrogen are key toxins to be expelled that are recovered from wastewater for practical advancement, and apart from that, precious metals are also recovered from wastewater with the help of BES. BES omits traditional nitrogen removal practices like nitrification and denitrification by implementing an ammonium nitrogen recovery technique, and removal of phosphorus in wastewater occurs by the formation of granules of polyphosphate by polyphosphate-amassing organisms. In this chapter, recent advancements in BES, its types, mechanism, and the influencing factors are explained in detail, and apart from that, the nutrient removal and recovery from industrial wastewater are also highlighted.

The emerging pollutant such as metronidazole, chloramphenicol and sulphonamide were utilized for this research. Three-dimensional electrochemical reactor with particle electrodes such as Strychnos potatorum used to treat the above emerging pollutants. Voltage, pH, initial pollutant concentration and the particle electrode concentration were varied and the optimum conditions for the effective removal was found to be at 9 V, 15 grams of particle electrode and 100 mg/L of initial pollutant concentration. The efficiency of removal was found to be 93.68% for metronidazole, 94.56% for chloramphenicol and 94.11% for sulphonamide under optimum conditions. The air flow was varied to 2 L/min, 3 L/min and 5 L/min, the removal efficiency was found to be 80.24%, 94.12% and 95.26% for the above air flow rates. The comparison of adsorption, two-dimensional electrochemical treatment and three-dimensional electrochemical treatment was done and among them, three-dimensional electrochemical treatment was found to be 18.3% higher when compared to two-dimensional electrochemical treatment The removal efficiency for three-dimensional and two-dimensional treatment were found to be 53.74% and 45.83% in 60 min.

Hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) process is a wet-thermochemical conversion technology that was used to convert biomass into bio-crude oil. Commercialization of the HTL technology faces drawbacks due to product stability, by-products generation and working area. In order to overcome these challenges, this review especially focuses on possible pathways to valorise and recover nutrients from post-hydrothermal liquefaction wastewater (PHWW) that was obtained during the HTL process. Numerous studies were reported on bio-oil production from biomasses like algae, forest and agriculture residues, etc at a temperature range of 240–320 °C at time of 30–60 min. Apart from bio-oil, nearly 25 to 50 wt% of aqueous phase was generated, disposal of this aqueous phase is hectic since it comprised of low molecular weight acid compounds. In this study, the composition of PHWW and possible routes (biological and thermochemical pathways) to valorise it were discussed in detail. In addition, recycle and reutilization of PHWW were reviewed with recent findings. From the review, the use of anaerobic digestion as a detoxify step prior to microalgae cultivation resulted in decreasing the fresh water dilution from 20 × to 4 × and improved the energy output from 3.44 to 20.7 kJ g⁻1 COD. This review will provide new insights towards closed circular approach opportunities in thermochemical pathways during sustainable energy production.

Pharmaceutical compounds and their derivatives are major pollutants in the environment, as their metabolites affect the terrestrial as well as aquatic organisms in one or another way. In recent times, many papers have discussed the treatment procedures for single pharmaceutical and mixture of pharmaceutical components, but only few papers have discussed the fate and the exposure of pharmaceutical contaminants in our environment. In this paper, we discuss the sources and the forms of pharmaceutical products and their resultant in the environment and their addition to the microbial and to human communities. A detailed discussion of various treatment techniques from conventional to current techniques, their advantages and disadvantages is given here. Researchers are finding the techniques in order to completely degrade the contaminants and their transformed products from the environment. Among the technique, s nanotechnology was found to be an efficient technique, and the combination of nanotechnology with other conventional technologies gives higher removal efficiency.