Guest Editors’ Note

Abstract

Dear Readers, In recent years there has been considerable interest in the removal of pollutants from water and wastewater by using adsorption treatment. Adsorption technique is an economical and effective method and it has shown to be very attractive over traditional treatment methods because of its several advantages, including adsorption capacity and low cost. In fact, the adsorption process has proven to be an excellent way to treat industrial effluents, offering significant advantages, especially from economic and environmental viewpoints, such as: low cost, accessibility, ease of operation and efficiency in comparison with conventional methods. Various waste products from industrial operations such as fly ash, coal, oxides, lignocellulosic materials and agricultural waste and natural materials such as shell peanuts, coconut, sugar cane, clay, soil, among others, are being applied as inexpensive adsorbents in wastewater treatment. These adsorbents can be applied as a sustainable technique for sorption of many classes of organic and inorganic pollutants. The Special Issue: Low Cost Materials Used to Sorption Process aimed to cover the recent progress in all aspects of this important field of Sorption Science. The thematic topics focused on: sorption using inexpensive material, wastewater treatment using alternative materials, low-cost materials applied to air and water. Articles addressing the use of various low-cost adsorbents- applied in the removal of organic and inorganic substances found in liquids-, provide a significant contribution on the subject. The use of experiments as batch and fixed-bed column, as well as various isotherm models was applied to explain the sorption phenomena, which will certainly be an improvement to this science field. Currently, there is a great appeal for solutions considered "clean" or "green" including the reuse of waste materials, given the economic and environmental context. The technology of low cost material deserves further study and this special issue presents a significant contribution about the basic understanding of the theory and new scientific approaches on the use of low cost adsorbents.