Related Articles
Balancing sustainability goals and treatment efficacy for PFAS removal from water
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are emerging water contaminants with significant environmental and health impacts, posing challenges in water treatment due to their high stability and persistence. With increasing regulations, a critical need remains in understanding the sustainability of PFAS treatment technologies. Our review examines the environmental, economic, and social impacts of current PFAS treatment technologies across different water types and contexts. Additionally, we propose a framework for future sustainability studies to enable more holistic technology evaluations under specific conditions.
A comprehensive review of KCC-1 fibrous silica for water treatment
The growing global demand for freshwater necessitates advanced water treatment technologies. This review highlights the application of fibrous silica spheres, KCC-1, in water remediation, focusing on the removal of heavy metals and organic dyes. KCC-1’s unique fibrous morphology, high surface area, and physicochemical properties make it a promising adsorbent. This work examines its synthesis, modifications, and advantages, providing insights into optimizing KCC-1-based adsorbents for sustainable water treatment.
Towards sustainable perovskite light-emitting diodes
Perovskite light-emitting diodes (PeLEDs) are advancing to become the frontrunner candidates for the next generation of lighting and display technologies. However, despite rapid technical development, a thorough understanding of PeLEDs’ environmental and economic impacts—essential information for future commercialization—is currently lacking. Here we assess the environmental and economic performance of 18 representative PeLEDs, aiming to identify effective industrial techniques to develop sustainable PeLEDs from a life-cycle perspective. We find that, like mature organic LEDs, PeLEDs show excellent environmental performance. In addition, we demonstrate that lead is not a major source of toxicity from PeLEDs. We estimate that, to commercialize PeLEDs and improve their sustainability, their lifetime should reach the order of 10,000 hours to compensate for the relative environmental impacts. The techno-economic assessment indicates that the cost of future PeLEDs will probably be in the vicinity of US$100 m–2, comparable to that of commercial organic LED panels. Overall, this study shows the potential of PeLEDs as next-generation lighting technology from environmental, economic and technical perspectives, providing insights relevant to their future development.
Sustainable production of CO2-derived materials
The current CO2 emissions scale (Gton) magnitude is 5–6 orders greater than that of utilization (Mton). CO2 utilization should focus on its massive consumption, application of sustainable technologies, low-C energy sources and long-lasting products. CO2 conversion into materials might fulfill these requirements while using C-neutral resources and circularization to avoid waste generation will contribute to achieve sustainability. This article revises reported RD&T on production of CO2-derived materials and circularization approaches.
Potential mechanisms and modifications of dietary antioxidants on the associations between co-exposure to plastic additives and diabetes
The association of plastic additive mixture exposure with diabetes and the modifying effects of dietary antioxidants are unclear.
Responses