Biowaste Valorization Using Hydrothermal Carbonization for Potential Wastewater Treatment Applications

Abstract

In today’s world, due to population increase, there are many alarming and potential catastrophic problems like climate change, environmental pollution and an enormous mass of wastes constantly produced by humankind to find innovative solutions for the management, recycling, and valorization of biowaste from agricultural production, food processing, and organic household residues. The search for sustainable and efficient wastewater treatment technologies has gained scientific interest recently; particular focus is on using biowaste to produce hydrochars (HCs) via the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) process used as adsorbent materials for dye, heavy metal, and emerging pollutant removal. HTC materials derived from renewable resources are an environmentally friendly and adequate way to adsorb pollutants such as organic and inorganic molecules from wastewaters. This review focuses on the advantages of the HTC process which lead to improved properties of the materials obtained, making them highly efficient in wastewater treatment. The information presented in this paper was derived from the most recent publications in the field. Future perspectives of HC materials should consider the possibilities of scale-up, pretreatment of biowastes, and the optimal parameters of the HTC process to produce HCs applied for pollutant removal from wastewaters.