Abstract
In pursuit of a green and sustainable world, wastewater remediation and sludge treatment have equally become a growing global environmental concern. Several innovative treatment processes have been designed throughout the last few decades for treating wastewaters and sludges but many of them are very costly and operate at low efficiencies. In view to find novel treatment processes, active research is being conducted globally. Microwave irradiation technology is gradually making a modest but promising mark of its own in enhancing to significant extents the ease, fastness, and efficiency of certain treatment processes involved in wastewater and sludge management. The authors focus on and appraise the budding use and application of microwave irradiation in chemical research undertaken for sludge and wastewater treatment. The related aspects of microwave-assisted heavy metal stabilization, pathogen inactivation, wastewater parameter analysis, and wastewater treatment polymers synthesis are also discussed.
Notes
Status of industrial scale radiation treatment of wastewater and its future. Proceedings of a consultants meeting held in Daejon, 13–16 October 2003 (Document Number IAEA-TECDOC-1407. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Vienna, 2004).
The reader is directed to Martin et al. (2006) for further information on the experimental conditions studied and the possible disinfection mechanisms.