Articles

A robust and sustainable membrane anti-biofouling approach is needed to ensure long-term continuous and efficient water treatment. A dynamic membrane with sufficient and reliable active sites to load anti-biofouling agents in the membraneʼs internal structure and reload them after the release process is proposed with the goal of sustainable membrane biofouling control.

Although the contribution of microplastic fibres to pollution is well documented, less is known about the chemical composition of nanoplastics. The observation of plastic residues from textile washing shows the important contribution of water-insoluble oligomer particles to plastic pollution.

This study presents the probability of drought occurrence in various regions globally and demonstrates the pivotal role of moisture transport deficit. Assessing the contribution deficit of the dominant global moisture source to regional precipitation enhances drought predictability.

Climate model simulations and aridity indices suggest decreasing summertime surface soil moisture in the continental USA due to anthropogenic climate change, but observations from 2011 to 2020 reveal positive trends across 57% of the region. Using a two-layer land surface model, this study attributes short-term soil moisture changes mainly to internal precipitation variability, and long-term trends to uncertain precipitation alterations.

Metal–organic framework (MOF)-based membranes hold great potential for water purification but are not used in practical applications due to challenges in scaling them up. The nanoreactor-confined crystallization strategy enables rapid and roll-to-roll fabrication of high-performance ultra-thin (∼25 nm) MOF hybrid membranes (0.33 m × 35 m) that show high performance in separating close-size solutes present in aqueous solutions.

The proactive approach to economically and safely extracting microalgae shows potential for efficiently controlling and preventing water blooms. A circular strategy mediated by a customized adsorber for electrostatic microalgae capture coupled with flexible magnetic collection demonstrates remarkable microalgae harvesting and recovery efficiency.

Production losses due to drought escalate progressively with the depletion of aquifers, underscoring the need for proactive measures in aquifer conservation.

Although it is widely acknowledged that nanoplastic and microplastic contaminants are omnipresent in the environment, the role of water treatment plants in the fate of these contaminants is unclear. Correlating nanoplastic removal with total suspended solids removal in water is shown to be a reliable method for predicting how much nanoplastic can be removed by wastewater treatment plants.

Australia will not achieve SDG 6.1 (water for all) without improving drinking water quality in small, rural and remote communities. Australians are willing to pay AU$1.2–4.7 billion yr⁻¹ to ensure good-quality drinking water, and the cost would be AU$0.2–1.3 billion.

Harnessing solar energy to generate electricity and provide water is recognized as a sustainable pathway to addressing water scarcity and electricity shortage. The integration of passive interfacial cooling in a hybrid system boosts the utilization of waste heat and latent heat from the hybrid modules and minimizes the energy loss to air.

Fe⁰-enabled nanotechnologies for the reduction of refractory organic contaminants have the limitations of poor selectivity and low stability during water treatment. A lattice doping technique based on Lewis acid–base chemistry to incorporate lattice Ni and S into crystalline Fe⁰ can achieve rapid and highly selective chemical reductions.

It is difficult to remove micropollutants in water due to their chemical diversity, low concentrations and slow uptake by industrial adsorbents. Here, a tailorable zwitterionic hydrogel is shown to rapidly and simultaneously absorb organic and inorganic micropollutants from water.

Fabric distillation is proposed as a thermal desalination technique that employs hydrophilic fabrics to separate the vapour water from the feed water through capillary and Coandă effects.

Hybrid urban water supply systems combine conventional, centralized water sources with distributed sources. Such system configurations are shown to exhibit lower severity, range of impact and duration of substandard performance compared with centralized systems in a number of disruptive incidents.

Fe-based electrodes emerge as an effective and economical option to treat nitrate-laden wastewater. Whereas Fe cathode corrosion is commonly considered as an adverse factor for the electroreduction of nitrate to ammonia, intentional corrosion-induced surficial reconstruction has the potential to enhance catalytic performance.

By utilizing flooding records and county-level daily deaths during 2015 to 2019 across 98 counties in North Carolina, United States, this study found significant associations between cause-specific mortality and short-term exposure to flooding.

The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a critical control on winter precipitation in the Intermountain West of North America but is impacted by mountainous terrain and climate change. This study isolates ENSO impacts from these complicating factors using a spatially distributed, nonlinear spline model applied to long-term gauge observations.

Membranes are useful for removing pollutants from water, but the pore size of most commercial membranes is larger than the molecular size of many trace organic contaminants. Here an engineered covalent organic framework allows pore size regulation to efficiently remove organic pollutants.

A water splitting system capable of operating stably using contaminated water sources for decentralized H₂ production would be a more practical approach towards solar H₂ production. A floating hybrid photocatalyst sheet device can simultaneously perform photocatalytic gas-phase water splitting and clean water production using contaminated water sources such as seawater and other waste waters.

Farmer livelihoods and food production are impacted by water shortages in many regions globally. These shortages can be mitigated by changing the mix of crops produced in water-scarce regions, potentially resulting in reduced irrigation needs of 28–57%.