Water and wastewater treatment

Organic pollutants in shale gas flowback and produced waters: identification, potential ecological impact and implications for treatment strategies, Butkovskyi, A., H. Bruning, S.A.E. Kools, H.H.M. Rijnaarts, and A.P. van Wezel, Environ. Sci. Technol., Publication Date (Web): April 5, 2017 (Critical Review), DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.6b05640.

Following on the section dealing with hydraulic fracturing in Chapter 8, and expanding on municipal wastewater treatment covered in Chapter 16, this paper investigates treatment of the specific organic compounds found in wastewater produced during the ‘fracking’ process. As we have noted in Chapter 15 in the subsection called ‘Parameters to measure organic matter content in water’ and mention again in Chapter 16, Section 16.3, BOD and COD are important wastewater parameters to know in order to effectively treat wastewater. This paper specifically covers the organic contaminants found in shale gas wastewater, measured as total organic carbon (TOC) or chemical oxygen demand (COD). However, more specific analysis must be done to identify individual molecules due to their potential toxic effect, which is what this paper discusses.

Comparing Resistance, Resilience and Stability of Replicate Moving Bed Biofilm and Suspended Growth Combined Nitrification-Anammox Reactors, Wells, G.F., Y. Shi, M. Laureni, A. Rosenthal, I. Szivák, D.G. Weissbrodt, A. Joss, H. Buergmann, D.R. Johnson, and E. Morgenroth, Environ. Sci. Technol., Publication Date (Web): April 4, 2017 (Article), DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.6b05878.

This paper nicely combines the topics of nitrogen removal from wastewater that we discuss in Chapter 16 (Microbiological nitrogen removal) and Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (Anammox) that we cover in Chapter 15. This paper is a practical look at the combined partial nitritation-anammox (PN/A) system that is increasingly used for nitrogen removal from wastewater.

 

Water and wastewater processes (2 papers)

Long-term trends and opportunities for managing regional water supply and wastewater greenhouse gas emissions, Hall, M.R., J. West, B. Sherman, J. Lane, and D. de Haas, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 5434–5440 (Published by ACS, May 2011).

This paper is a clear example of the final sentence in Section 16.6 where we state that it is ‘important to ensure proper control of the atmospheric emissions’ from the operation of wastewater treatment processes. However, this paper provides an even wider perspective, covering both water supply and wastewater processes with a projected 50 year time horizon. (see also Chapter 8)

Evaluation of contaminant removal of reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation in full-scale operation by combining passive sampling with chemical analysis and bioanalytical tools

Escher, B. I., M. Lawrence, M. Macova, J. F. Mueller, Y. Poussade, C. Robillot, A. Roux, and W. Gernjak, Environ. Sci. Technol. 2011, 45, 5387–5394 (Published by ACS, May 2011)

Advanced wastewater treatment processes (Section 16.5) specifically focuses on microbiological processes for phosphorus and nitrogen, while this paper discusses the increasing need to target specific organic pollutant molecules that are becoming increasingly prevalent. Treatment of secondary effluents for specific small molecules and their processes are not common (on full-scale systems) and this study shows that these advanced chemical systems are feasible.

 

Chemicals for water disinfection

The chlorine dilemma, Sedlak, D.L. and von U. Gunten, Science (2011) 42-43 (Published by the AAAS, January 2011).

This article briefly considers the problems associated with the use of chlorine as a drinking water disinfectant – namely the production of distinction by-products (DBPs) like chloroform, some of which are known to be carcinogenic. One alternative has been to use chloramine which is less reactive in terms of producing the conventional DBPs. However, this compound recently has been found to generate N-nitrosodimethylamine which is also carcinogenic and also to enhance solubilization of lead in some drinking water supplies. These and other issues associated with various disinfection methods are discussed.