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The advancement of science has facilitated increase in the human lifespan, reflected in economic and population growth, which unfortunately leads to increased exploitation of resources. This situation entails not only depletion of resources, but also increases environmental pollution, mainly due to atmospheric emissions, wastewater effluents, and solid wastes. In this scenario, it is compulsory to adopt a paradigm change, as far as the consumption of resources by the population is concerned, to achieve a circular economy. The recovery and reuse of resources are key points, leading to a decrease in the consumption of raw materials, waste reduction, and improvement of energy efficiency. This is the reason why the concept of the circular economy can be applied in any industrial activity, including the wastewater treatment sector. With this in view, this review manuscript focuses on demonstrating the challenges and opportunities in applying a circular economy in the water sector. For example, reclamation and reuse of wastewater to increase water resources, by paying particular attention to the risks for human health, recovery of nutrients, or highly added-value products (e.g., metals and biomolecules among others), valorisation of sewage sludge, and/or recovery of energy. Being aware of this situation, in the European, Union 18 out of 27 countries are already reusing reclaimed wastewater at some level. Moreover, many wastewater treatment plants have reached energy self-sufficiency, producing up to 150% of their energy requirements. Unfortunately, many of the opportunities presented in this work are far from becoming a reality. Still, the first step is always to become aware of the problem and work on optimizing the solution to make it possible.

The direct oxidative dehydrogenation of lactates with molecular oxygen is a “greener” alternative for producing pyruvates. Here we report a one-pot synthesis of mesoporous vanadia–titania (VTN), acting as highly efficient and recyclable catalysts for the conversion of ethyl lactate to ethyl pyruvate. These VTN materials feature high surface areas, large pore volumes, and high densities of isolated vanadium species, which can expose the active sites and facilitate the mass transport. In comparison to homogeneous vanadium complexes and VOx/TiO2 prepared by impregnation, the meso-VTN catalysts showed superior activity, selectivity, and stability in the aerobic oxidation of ethyl lactate to ethyl pyruvate. We also studied the effect of various vanadium precursors, which revealed that the vanadium-induced phase transition of meso-VTN from anatase to rutile depends strongly on the vanadium precursor. NH4VO3 was found to be the optimal vanadium precursor, forming more monomeric vanadium species. V4+ as the major valence state was incorporated into the lattice of the NH4VO3-derived VTN material, yielding more V4+–O–Ti bonds in the anatase-dominant structure. In situ DRIFT spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations show that V4+–O–Ti bonds are responsible for the dissociation of ethyl lactate over VTN catalysts and for further activation of the deprotonation of β-hydrogen. Molecular oxygen can replenish the surface oxygen to regenerate the V4+–O–Ti bonds.

CO 2 is a promising renewable, cheap, and abundant C1 feedstock for producing valuable chemicals, such as CO and methanol. In conventional reactors, because of thermodynamic constraints, converting CO 2 to methanol requires high temperature and pressure, typically 250 °C and 20 bar. Nonthermal plasma is a better option, as it can convert CO 2 at near-ambient temperature and pressure. Adding a catalyst to such plasma setups can enhance conversion and selectivity. However, we know little about the effects of catalysts in such systems. Here, we study CO 2 hydrogenation in a dielectric barrier discharge plasma-catalysis setup under ambient conditions using MgO, γ-Al 2 O 3 , and a series of Co x O y /MgO catalysts. While all three catalyst types enhanced CO 2 conversion, Co x O y /MgO gave the best results, converting up to 35% of CO 2 and reaching the highest methanol yield (10%). Control experiments showed that the basic MgO support is more active than the acidic γ-Al 2 O 3 , and that MgO-supported cobalt oxide catalysts improve the selectivity toward methanol. The methanol yield can be tuned by changing the metal loading. Overall, our study shows the utility of plasma catalysis for CO 2 conversion under mild conditions, with the potential to reduce the energy footprint of CO 2 -recycling processes.

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This research compares the environmental properties (bacterial toxicity and biodegradability) of 12 ionic liquids-ILs-(7 phosphonium, 2 imidazolium and 3 ammonium cation-based ones), potentially applicable as lubricant additive, with two types of the traditional lubricant additive ZDDP. Aquatic toxicity was determined by means of Vibrio fischeri and Escherichia coli bacteria, while biodegradability was evaluated through biological oxygen demand (BOD 5) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) measurements. Regarding toxicity results, [P 4442 ][DEP] was the least toxic IL (acute 3 according to GHS) for both bacteria, whereas ZDDP fell into the acute 1 category (very toxic). All samples tested turned out to be poorly biodegradable, showing BOD 5 /COD values below 0.1. Two ILs showed better combined tribological and environmental properties than ZDDP.

Three new ionic liquids with different anions and the same cation were synthesized from fatty acids through a metathesis reaction. All the ionic liquids were identified via NMR and FTIR and several properties (density, viscosity, thermal, and environmental) were measured. Traction tests were performed under different entrainment speeds (10-2000 mm/s), at slide-roll ratio (SRR) of 50% and 30 N-load, and at different temperatures (40, 60, 80 and 100 ºC) using a mini-traction machine (MTM). Tribofilm formation tests were also made in the MTM at 50 N-load, 150 mm/s of entrainment speed, at SRR of 50% and temperature of 100 ºC, for 60 minutes. This work showed that the alkyl chain length in the anion affects properties such as viscosity, toxicity, biodegradability and lubrication. Viscosity decreased with increasing alkyl chain length but only below 60ºC, at higher temperatures the viscosity values of the ionic liquids converge. The toxicity and biodegradability increased with the alkyl chain length, but these novel ionic liquids are much better from both toxicity and biodegradability points of view than the [N8881][TFSI] ionic liquid, which contains the same cation and anion not coming from fatty acids. The ionic liquids at low temperature (40 ºC) performed under elastohydrodynamic lubrication and changed to mixed lubrication at higher temperatures and decreasing speeds, according to the alkyl chain length of each anion. All ionic liquids adsorbed on the steel surfaces, and the tribofilm thickness and the kinetics of formation were different.

This work deals with the determination of several wetting properties (contact angle, surface tension, polarity fraction and spreading parameter) of six novel fatty acid anion-based ionic liquids (FAILs): methyltrioctylammonium hexanoate [N 8881 ][C 6:0 ], methyltrioctylammonium octanoate [N 8881 ][C 8:0 ], methyltrioctylammonium laurate [N 8881 ][C 12:0 ], methyltrioctylammonium palmitate [N 8881 ][C 16:0 ], methyltrioctylammonium stearate [N 8881 ][C 18:0 ] and methyltrioctylammonium oleate [N 8881 ][C 18:1 ]. Surface tension was determined at temperatures from 293 to 333 K, exhibiting a linear decrease within the temperature range. Contact angle measurements were performed on five different surfaces (steel, aluminum, tungsten carbide, cast iron and bronze) using 3 test liquids (water, diiodomethane and ethylenglycol)and each of the synthesized FAILs. Polarity fraction (PF) and the spreading parameter (SP) were calculated in order to gain a deeper understanding of wetting characteristics of these FAILs. Despite the similarity of the obtained results with all FAILs and surfaces, [N 8881 ][C 6:0 ] and [N 8881 ][C 8:0 ] with both cast iron and bronze surfaces were the best surface-FAIL combinations regarding wettability.