Water Research 178 (2020) 115856
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Water Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/watres
Editorial
Resource recovery from water: From concept to standard practice
Resource recovery from water is nothing new. Energy recovery
through biogas production using anaerobic digestion and the reuse
of biosolids in agriculture as an organic fertilizer has been practiced
for over 100 years. Moreover, the production of potable water
directly from sewage recently celebrated its 50th year anniversary
in 2018 in Windhoek (Namibia). Despite these examples, in terms
of absolute numbers, only a very small fraction of the resources
embedded in wastewater are being recovered. Indeed, since the
inception of modern wastewater treatment in the beginning of
the 20th century, the first and foremost role has been to safeguard
human health and protect the environment. To achieve this, man-
agement and engineering practice have been mostly directed to-
wards removing pollutants through dissipative pathways rather
than considering recovery as a key performance indicator. As we
become increasingly aware of the broader environmental and eco-
nomic implications of focusing solely on pollution mitigation, a key
challenge in the years ahead will be to re-envision the role of urban
water management within the circular economy, moving beyond
safeguarding local human and environmental health to become a
more proactive force for sustainable development through the re-
covery of resources embedded in urban water.
In recent years, enormous efforts by both the water industry and
scientific community have focussed on developing innovative ap-
proaches that can recover resources from water while meeting water
quality standards. This has resulted in a plethora of scientific discov-
eries and approaches that are considered technically feasible within
a more scientific and controlled laboratory-scale context. An impor-
tant next (and often challenging) step forward towards practical
implementation is their demonstration under real-life conditions
at a practical, relevant scale. Therefore, in this special edition we
encouraged submissions of innovative approaches aiming to deter-
mine the practical feasibility of resource recovery approaches at
pilot-scale and under real life conditions. Such studies are essential
to critically assess and overcome constraints/limitations of technolo-
gies that are often observed when scaling-up to practical sizes rele-
vant to implementation.
Successfully recovering resources from water - rather than ‘mak-
ing them disappear’ e requires the consideration of factors beyond
those relevant to conventional removal processes. First, the feasi-
bility of a resource recovery approach does not only rely on the
techno-economic feasibility and the environmental benefits that
can be achieved by the recovery process itself. Critical aspects
that will ultimately determine the success include the recovery po-
tential of a product in terms of mass/volume, market value, product
strengths and purity compared with market requirements. Second,
depending on the water source (e.g., presence or absence of patho-
gens and toxic compounds) and the end-use of the recovered prod-
uct, social, cultural and regulatory hurdles that might hinder real-
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2020.115856
0043-1354/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
life implementation and commercialization of the technology
need to be considered.
In order for urban water management to fully transition into the
emerging circular economy in the 21st century and resource recov-
ery to become a standard management practice, significant efforts
are needed in the coming years to establish close collaboration and
cross-sectoral links and value chains. The end-users of the recovered
resources may be from industrial sectors with which the water in-
dustry and academia do not sufficiently engage, but engagement
will be critical to overcome social, legislative, and regulatory bar-
riers that may be difficult to address and overcome.
It goes without saying that, in the end, ‘resource recovery has to
be good money’. Ultimately, the ambition should be to develop
wastewater treatment processes that efficiently treat wastewater
while cost-effectively recovering resources at such as scale and
price that it can completely off-set the treatment costs or even
generate a profit. To achieve such an ambitious goal, breakthrough
concepts rather than incremental improvements are essential. In
the last couple of years, the potential of various breakthrough tech-
nologies that couple resource recovery with upgrading the recov-
ered resource through synthesis of value-added products have
been demonstrated at laboratory-scale.
Based on the above described important aspects and research pri-
orities, in this special edition of Water Research entitled ‘Resource Re-
covery from Water: From concept to standard practice’ authors were
encouraged to submit their work related to the following topics:
 Pilot-scale demonstration of innovative resource recovery
technologies;
 Breakthrough technologies for resource recovery and the syn-
thesis of value-added products;
 Global perspectives and modeling on planning and imple-
mentation of next-generation resource recovery, (waste)water
treatment and sanitation infrastructure;
 Monetization, financing, and policy-making to foster resource
recovery as central components of circular economies;
 Cross-sectoral links and value chains e enhancing feasibility and
sustainability through interdisciplinary research;
 Economic, legislative, and societal opportunities and barriers.
In total, this special edition consists of 23 manuscripts spanning
all of the listed topics. Overall, we believe this special edition pro-
vides an excellent overview of the wide variety and multi-
disciplinary nature of research currently being conducted in the
field of resource recovery from water. We hope you will find the
manuscripts in this special edition as interesting as we have, and
that this will inspire you to keep exploring ‘resource recovery
from water’ in search of solutions and innovations. Hopefully, these
2 Editorial / Water Research 178 (2020) 115856

research efforts will result in accomplishing our aspirational goal of URL: https://www.univpm.it/Entra/docname/L/1
transforming “Resource Recovery” from a concept to standard prac-
Jeremy S. Guest
tice and widespread implementation in urban water management
Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of
in the years ahead!
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 3221 Newmark Civil Engineering
Laboratory, MC-250, 205 North Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801-
Ilje Pikaar* 2352, USA
The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
*
Xia Huang Corresponding author.
School of Environment, Tsinghua University, China E-mail address: i.pikaar@uq.edu.au (I. Pikaar).

Francesco Fatone Available online 21 April 2020

Department of Science and Engineering of Materials, Environment
and Urban Planning, Polytechnic University of Marche, Via Brecce
Bianche 12, 60100 Ancona, Italy
E-mail addresses: f.fatone@univpm.it.