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Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are one of the main barriers in the water cycle as they limit the water reuse due to their adverse effects on humans and the ecosystem. Natural and/or engineered ecosystems, such as conventional wastewater treatment processes, are not designed to remove CECs and contribute to the bioaccumulation in organisms considering high volumes of treated water discharges. The adoption of innovative solutions to upgrade urban water cycle facilities has gained relevance for the removal of these substances from final effluents. Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) show promising selective removal toward a wide range of CECs. However, this solution is still limited to lab/bench scale and needs to be critically analyzed and assessed for possible scale-up in real environment. Therefore, in this review, an overview of the fate and occurrence of CECs in wastewater is initially reported together with the state-of-the-art in adsorption mechanisms to remove these compounds. In the central part of the paper, an evaluation of MIPs synthesis and their status in removing CECs from water matrix are presented. An upscaling pathway of MIPs column from lab-to pilot-scale is given to be applied for enhanced CECs removal and safe water reuse in irrigation/fertigation. Finally, possible integrations of MIP columns to real wastewater treatment facilities is discussed and advantages and disadvantages of the potential solutions are addressed to enhance their sustainability.

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Monoolein-based cubic and hexagonal mesophases were investigated as matrices for insulin loading, at low pH, as a function of temperature and in the presence of increasing amounts of oleic acid, as a structural stabilizer for the hexagonal phase. Synchrotron small angle X-ray diffraction, rheological measurements, and attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to study the effects of insulin loading on the lipid mesophases and of the effect of protein confinement in the 2D- and 3D-lipid matrix water channels on its stability and unfolding behavior. We found that insulin encapsulation has only little effects both on the mesophase structures and on the viscoelastic properties of lipid systems, whereas protein confinement affects the response of the secondary structure of insulin to thermal changes in a different manner according to the specific mesophase: in the cubic structure, the unfolding toward an unordered structure is favored, while the prevalence of parallel β-sheets, and nuclei for fibril formation, is observed in hexagonal structures.