AIM The application of iron-reducing bacteria (IRB) to phosphate removal from returned liquor (liquid fraction after activated sludge digestion and anaerobic sludge dewatering) of municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) was studied. METHODS AND RESULTS An enrichment culture and two pure cultures of IRB, Stenotrophomonas maltophilia BK and Brachymonas denitrificans MK identified by 16S rRN...

The reuse of treated municipal sewage ('biosolids') on land is an effective method to divert waste away from landfill and to use an alternative, low cost method of fertilisation. While legislation has mainly focused on the control of nutrient and metal application rates to land, other potentially harmful emerging contaminants (ECs) may be present in biosolids. Up to 80% of municipal sewage slud...

Microbial population dynamics were evaluated in anaerobic codigesters treating municipal solid waste and sewage sludge. Ribosomal RNA based oligonucleotide probes were used to characterize changes in population abundance of syntrophic volatile fatty acid degrading bacteria and methanogens. Changes in community structure were linked to traditional performance parameters during the recovery of pr...

This paper covers the start-up of a pilot-plant experiment where land ll leachate from a Swedish municipal waste land ll (Spillepeng) was treated using a sequencing batch reactor (SBR). The leachate was characterised by high COD and NH4-N concentrations, low BOD/COD ratio, pH slightly over 7 and a high conductivity. During the studied period the mean temperature was 21°C, pH was 7.5 in the reac...

Thousands of chemicals have been identified as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs), but prioritizing them concerning ecological and human health risks is challenging. We explored the use of sewage treatment plants as chemical observatories to conveniently identify persistent and bioaccumulative CECs, including toxic organohalides. Nationally representative samples of sewage sludge (biosolid...

A hybrid ultrafiltration-osmotic membrane bioreactor (UFO-MBR) was investigated for over 35 days for nutrient and trace organic chemical (TOrC) removal from municipal wastewater. The UFO-MBR system uses both ultrafiltration (UF) and forward osmosis (FO) membranes in parallel to simultaneously extract clean water from an activated sludge reactor for nonpotable (or environmental discharge) and po...

Most of the developing countries particularly Indonesia will be facing the dilemmatic problems of sludge pressure in next decades due to increasing the legal and illegal loggings as well as the land and water demands resulting from the population growth, improved standard of people living and urbanization as well as economic and industrial developments. Consequence, there will be facing also th...

Wastewater samples collected from two sewage treatment plants (STPs) in Guangzhou, China were acidified, solid-phase extracted (SPE) with Oasis HLB cartridges, followed by instrumental measurement by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with a diode array UV detector (DAD) and a fluorescence detector (FLD) for the occurrence and fate of antimicrobial compounds sulfadiazine (SDZ...

The paper presents the results of two full-scale applications of the anaerobic co-digestion process of waste activated sludge together with the organic fraction of municipal solid wastes. The experiences were carried out at Viareggio and Treviso wastewater treatment plants (Italy). In the first plant, 3 tons per day of source sorted OFMSW were co-digested with waste activated sludge, increasing...

The co-digestion of two problematic and available wastes, namely Organic Fraction Municipal Solid Waste (OFMSW) and biological sludge, was carried out in this work. Biochemical Methane Potential (BMP) tests are a useful tool for determining the best substrate and co-digestion configurations, however there are some methodologies destined to save costs and time from this process by using the theo...