Hong Kong Museum : Energy from Wastewater Exhibit

Hong Kong -- Many energy experts predict that hydrogen will replace fossil fuel as the main source of energy supply in the near future as it is an ideal fuel that produces only water upon combustion. To enable the public to learn more about this technology, the Hong Kong Science Museum launches a new exhibition entitled "Bio-hydrogen production from wastewater" at its Science News Corner through January 17, 2010.

The exhibition, with information provided by Professor Herbert H P  Fang, Chair of Environmental Engineering of the Department of Civil Engineering at The University of Hong Kong, introduces the use of biological technology to produce hydrogen from wastewater.

Hydrogen is an ideal and environmentally friendly energy source. It has very high fuel value and produces only water upon combustion. Many economists and scientists believe that the economy of the 21st century will be powered by hydrogen, just as petroleum did in the 20th century and coal in the 19th century.

Although petroleum had been used since the early 20th century for motor vehicles and airplanes, it took about 50 years for petroleum to overtake  coal as the main energy source for the world economy. Currently, using hydrogen is only at the embryonic stage. It is, however, believed that hydrogen will eventually replace petroleum as the main energy source for the world economy.

Hydrogen can be used directly as fuel for internal combustion engines. Hydrogen cars and buses are already in use in Europe and America. It can also be used for airplanes as demonstrated by the Russians in the 1960s. Furthermore, converting hydrogen into energy is a mature technology in which hydrogen reacts with oxygen producing electricity at an ambient temperature.

The full scale application of hydrogen as fuel is presently hampered by the lack of technologies for its safe storage and an infrastructure for its convenient supply to users. Today, hydrogen is mostly produced by gasification of fossil fuel or by electrolysis of water.

Hydrogen can also be produced anaerobically by microorganisms under proper conditions. However, people can hardly detect hydrogen in the natural environment because the hydrogen produced is readily consumed by many hydrogen-consuming microorganisms which have developed the appetite. Researchers found that if engineers can control the anaerobic reactor condition to suppress the bioactivities of the hydrogen-consuming microorganisms, they should be able to harness hydrogen from wastewater.

Energy and environmental protection are two of the most significant issues for sustainable development today. Hydrogen-producing treatment technology is still in its infancy. Environmental microbiologists are looking for new microorganisms with substantially higher energy recovery efficiency.

Meanwhile, many research teams are developing various hybrid two-stage processes — generating bio-hydrogen from wastewater at the first stage and using phototrophic bacteria for further hydrogen production or the well-established methanogenic process at the second stage. A lot of work remains to be done, which may take another 10 to 20 years, for bio-hydrogen production from wastewater to become a widely accepted treatment technology.

Source: http://www.lcsd.gov.hk/

USF Scientist study viruses in Reclaimed Water

Tampa, FL -- It was the “yuck factor” of reclaimed water that got Karyna Rosario thinking.

As communities increasingly turn to reclaimed water as a source for irrigation – and some communities consider using it for drinking water – Rosario, a PhD student at USF’s College of Marine Science, became increasingly curious about exactly what viruses are present in reclaimed water.

What intrigued her were not the viruses the labs at sewage treatment facilities would know to go look for, but the more obscure or exotic ones that aren’t identified in routine testing.

So Rosario waded – quite literally - into the question at water treatment plants in Pinellas and Manatee counties and began cataloging the viruses she found with a novel technique designed to identify a full-range of unknown viruses. Her analysis – which found a full complement of animal, plant and human viruses in wastewater – has been published recently in the journal Environmental Microbiology.

The reassuring news, Rosario reports, is that none of the viruses she found in treated reclaimed water locally are human pathogens, putting to rest the most serious of fears about humans using treated wastewater. But her study, nonetheless, provides an important starting point for future research on viruses which survive the human body and are discharged into reclaimed water and how they might impact the environment when treated wastewater is used, whether for irrigation or drinking water supplies.

“There is a yuck factor when we think of reclaimed water,” said Rosario, who conducted her study under the tutelage of USF Professor Mya Breitbart, whose laboratory has used a new technique for identifying previously unknown viruses based on their genetic material (DNA or RNA). “But the reality is we need this alternative water supply and, thus, we need to know what is in the water, including viruses. You say the word ‘virus’ and people freak out, but not all viruses are dangerous to humans.”

One of the biggest concerns about reclaimed water use is whether it carries and spreads pathogens, and until recently the microbiological content of reclaimed water was still largely unknown. Viruses are of particular concern because they include highly stable pathogens that can be resistant to standard wastewater treatment processes, Rosario explained, noting that for practical reasons, current quality control methods do not test the presence of pathogens directly and the spread of viral pathogens through reclaimed water remains a real possibility.

In Tampa - where 55 million gallons of treated wastewater a day is discharged into Tampa Bay - the safety of reclaimed water also has become a large environmental concern.

Rosario was already working on her study with scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore when the focus on Tampa’s use of reclaimed water emerged this summer. But her study could provide some preliminary answers to the first question people ask when they consider reclaimed water: Just what is in there?

“This is a population survey,” Rosario explained in a recent interview. “From this study you can look at the different pathogens that are found. For example, you can look at the plant pathogens and find out if this is going to be a problem for agriculture?”

The study – titled “Metagenomic Analysis of Viruses in Reclaimed Water” – describes the novel method for identifying previously unknown viruses that’s been developed by Breitbart’s lab. Samples containing a host of viruses are processed to extract the virus’ DNA. The DNA is sequenced and then compared to existing databases of known DNA genomes to identify the viruses.

The difficulty for scientists, though, is that with millions of types of viruses in existence, there are still many more viruses that have yet to be identified and mapped. The process used in Breitbart’s lab also helps to identify never-before-seen viruses.

Rosario compared samples collected from effluent at a reclaimed water plant; reclaimed water coming from a public sprinkler; reclaimed water used at a plant nursery and drinking water from a plant nursery. She found reclaimed water contained 1,000-fold more virus-like particles than potable water and that reclaimed water may play a role in the dissemination of highly-stable viruses.

The viral community was dominated by viruses that infect bacteria, but viruses related to animal, plant, and insect pathogens were also identified. And while many of those viruses are in themselves not human pathogens, she concluded that further studies are needed to evaluate the impacts of reclaimed water use on human and ecosystem health.

The value, though, of knowing that viruses exist in treated wastewater is if some day there were to be a viral disease outbreak among people or in the agricultural sector and wastewater is a suspected source of the contamination, scientists now have a baseline list of what viruses are present there.

Source: http://www.usf.edu/

Hayden, ID -- Mercury removal from wastewater is a difficult problem to solve cost-effectively. This is particularly true considering the mercury discharge concentration goal of the 1995 Great Lakes Initiative, 1.3 parts per trillion (ppt).

Blue Water’s patented Blue PRO® reactive filtration process is able to lower mercury to very small concentrations for relatively little capital and operating cost by employing multiple removal mechanisms in a high flow system.

Blue PRO is able to accomplish co-precipitation and adsorption, overcome diffusion limitations within the moving sand bed, and also filter particulates. The process has been shown to have efficacy for mercury removal in both treatability studies and pilot-scale wastewater treatment projects.

Recently Blue Water has successfully piloted Blue PRO for mercury removal at both municipal and also industrial wastewater plants in Minnesota. Third-party laboratory results confirmed that the 1.3 ppt total mercury goal was achieved by Blue PRO. We look forward to helping wastewater plants, such as those in the Great Lakes region, meet their mercury discharge limits.

For more information contact:
Blue Water Technologies, Inc.
10450 N. Airport Drive
Hayden, Idaho 83835-9742
Telephone: 1-888-710-2583
Fax: 208-209-0396
Web site: http://www.blueh3o.net/

. Calgon Carbon supplies UV system to Boston Calgon Carbon selected to supply UV system to treat Boston drinking water by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.

Wastewater system "in a box"
Missouri S&T researcher thinks "inside the box" to create self-contained wastewater system for soldiers, small towns.
 

Larry T. Koehle elected President of APWA Larry T. Koehle, P.Eng., MPA, the Director of Public Works and Engineering for the Town of Caledon, ON, was elected President of APWA.

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I want to analyze the vapor from the water in an anaerobic reactor but my sensor cannot deal with H2S. How can I remove the H2S completely in either the water or remove it in the gas that comes from stripping the water?

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Wastewater Bacteria (Microbiology)
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Paperback, 272 pages, 2006

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Handbook of Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant Operations
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This week's photo is of a nitrification basin of the City of Moorhead, MN with nearly 1000 m3 of the Headworks Bio ActiveCell™ media carriers. The MBBR process is treating 6 mgd prior to chlorination and discharge into the Red River of the North. The Nitrification basin was designed to meet the new ammonia-nitrogen effluent limits.

Photo courtesy by Headworks Bio

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