Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy
Unsustainable urban expansion increases runoff, introducing heavy metals into municipal surface water systems. Despite the need to remove heavy metals from municipal surface water, conventional treatment technologies are ineffective in removing these contaminants. Reverse osmosis (RO) effectively re...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2025-09-01
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| Series: | Energy Nexus |
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| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772427125001433 |
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| author | Kedi Li Yuxuan Liu Mo Xie Haoxiang Li Sangyi Li Chenyu Wang Linyinxue Dong Jungbin Kim |
| author_facet | Kedi Li Yuxuan Liu Mo Xie Haoxiang Li Sangyi Li Chenyu Wang Linyinxue Dong Jungbin Kim |
| author_sort | Kedi Li |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Unsustainable urban expansion increases runoff, introducing heavy metals into municipal surface water systems. Despite the need to remove heavy metals from municipal surface water, conventional treatment technologies are ineffective in removing these contaminants. Reverse osmosis (RO) effectively removes emerging contaminants such as ionic matter, but generates concentrate that poses environmental challenges. The circular economy approach can address these issues by valorizing municipal surface water. Therefore, this study evaluates the feasibility of valorizing municipal surface water for clean water production and heavy metal removal using RO and mechanical vapor compression (MVC). When RO was employed to produce clean water, 98 % of ionic contaminants were successfully removed with high water recovery (>90 %). However, operating the community-scale RO system in batch mode led to significant reductions in water flux and operational instability at high recovery due to the limited feed volume and increased concentration. To understand the implications of these operational constraints further, the associated energy consumption and economic costs were systematically evaluated. The high-recovery RO operation reduced MVC energy needs, lowering the specific energy consumption (SEC) of the RO-MVC process to below 2 kWh/m3. This reduction in SEC lowered the unit product cost and increased revenue, particularly in high-income societies, with generation reaching $0.71/m3 at 95 % recovery. Further revenue potential could increase if the social costs of health risks induced by heavy metals and the economic value of the recovered metals are considered. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-a2b690c295024726a7cb232f3b7d51ce |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2772-4271 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-09-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Energy Nexus |
| spelling | doaj-art-a2b690c295024726a7cb232f3b7d51ce2025-08-20T05:08:13ZengElsevierEnergy Nexus2772-42712025-09-011910050210.1016/j.nexus.2025.100502Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economyKedi Li0Yuxuan Liu1Mo Xie2Haoxiang Li3Sangyi Li4Chenyu Wang5Linyinxue Dong6Jungbin Kim7Center for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, ChinaCenter for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, ChinaCenter for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, ChinaCenter for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, ChinaCenter for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, ChinaCenter for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, ChinaCenter for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, China; Wenzhou Municipal Key Laboratory for Applied Biomedical and Biopharmaceutical Informatics, Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, China; Zhejiang Bioinformatics International Science and Technology Cooperation Center, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, ChinaCenter for Sustainable Environmental and Ecosystem Research, Department of Environmental Science, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Wenzhou-Kean University, 88 Daxue Road Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, China; Department of Environmental and Sustainability Sciences, The Dorothy and George Hennings College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Kean University, 1000 Morris Avenue Union, NJ, 07083, USA; Wenzhou Municipal Key Laboratory for Applied Biomedical and Biopharmaceutical Informatics, Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, China; Zhejiang Bioinformatics International Science and Technology Cooperation Center, College of Science, Mathematics and Technology, Ouhai, Wenzhou, 325060, Zhejiang Province, China; Corresponding author.Unsustainable urban expansion increases runoff, introducing heavy metals into municipal surface water systems. Despite the need to remove heavy metals from municipal surface water, conventional treatment technologies are ineffective in removing these contaminants. Reverse osmosis (RO) effectively removes emerging contaminants such as ionic matter, but generates concentrate that poses environmental challenges. The circular economy approach can address these issues by valorizing municipal surface water. Therefore, this study evaluates the feasibility of valorizing municipal surface water for clean water production and heavy metal removal using RO and mechanical vapor compression (MVC). When RO was employed to produce clean water, 98 % of ionic contaminants were successfully removed with high water recovery (>90 %). However, operating the community-scale RO system in batch mode led to significant reductions in water flux and operational instability at high recovery due to the limited feed volume and increased concentration. To understand the implications of these operational constraints further, the associated energy consumption and economic costs were systematically evaluated. The high-recovery RO operation reduced MVC energy needs, lowering the specific energy consumption (SEC) of the RO-MVC process to below 2 kWh/m3. This reduction in SEC lowered the unit product cost and increased revenue, particularly in high-income societies, with generation reaching $0.71/m3 at 95 % recovery. Further revenue potential could increase if the social costs of health risks induced by heavy metals and the economic value of the recovered metals are considered.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772427125001433Circular economyMunicipal surface waterReverse osmosisClean waterHeavy metal |
| spellingShingle | Kedi Li Yuxuan Liu Mo Xie Haoxiang Li Sangyi Li Chenyu Wang Linyinxue Dong Jungbin Kim Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy Energy Nexus Circular economy Municipal surface water Reverse osmosis Clean water Heavy metal |
| title | Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy |
| title_full | Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy |
| title_fullStr | Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy |
| title_full_unstemmed | Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy |
| title_short | Municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy |
| title_sort | municipal surface water valorization for clean water recovery and heavy metal removal towards a circular economy |
| topic | Circular economy Municipal surface water Reverse osmosis Clean water Heavy metal |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772427125001433 |
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