Capturing the SARS-CoV-2 infection pyramid within the municipality of Rotterdam using longitudinal sewage surveillance

Despite high vaccination rates in the Netherlands, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to circulate. Longitudinal sewage surveillance was implemented along with the notification of cases as two parts of the surveillance pyramid to validate the use of sewage for surveillance, as an early warning tool, and to...

Integrated resource recovery from aerobic granular sludge plants

The study evaluated the combined phosphorus, nitrogen, methane, and extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) recovery from aerobic granular sludge (AGS) wastewater treatment plants. About 30% of sludge organics are recovered as EPS and 25–30% as methane (≈260 ml methane/g VS) by integrating alkaline anaerobic digestion (AD). It was shown that...

Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in sewage: Toward sentinels with analytical accuracy

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemia has been one of the most difficult challenges humankind has recently faced. Wastewater-based epidemiology has emerged as a tool for surveillance and mitigation of potential viral outbreaks, circumventing biases introduced by clinical patient testing. Due to the situation...

Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) fed with biogas containing hydrogen chloride traces: Impact on direct internal reforming and electrochemical performance

This study is particularly aimed at investigating the influence of hydrogen chloride traces in biogas on direct internal reforming in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). The experiments are performed with simulated biogas containing methane to carbon dioxide ratio of 3:2, the usual average proportion in biogas. To the best of our knowledge, there...

Potential of polymer sewage heat exchangers with enhanced thermal properties

Buildings contribute to 30% of global CO₂ emissions and consume 40% of the global energy supply (Yang et al., 2014). Heating and cooling requirements of the buildings form the major part of the energy consumption in buildings (Culha et al., 2015). Thus to solve this problem, one of the solutions currently being<br/>looked at is to...

Phosphate Recovery From Sewage Sludge Containing Iron Phosphate

The scope of this thesis was to lay the basis for a phosphate recovery technology that can be applied on sewage sludge containing iron phosphate. Such a technology should come with minimal changes to the existing sludge treatment configuration while keeping the use of chemicals or energy as small as possible. The research focused on...

Decentralized sewage treatment by ceramic Microfiltration: A study in the RINEW project concept

The increase in greenhouse gas emissions change the precipitation behaviour causing either extreme wet- or dry weather. This impacts the fresh water supply for clean water production. Evides B.V., one of the Dutch water companies, anticipates to these changes with the sewer mining concept called ‘RINEW’ (Rotterdam Innovative Nutrients and Energy...

Vivianite as an important iron phosphate precipitate in sewage treatment plants

Iron is an important element for modern sewage treatment, inter alia to remove phosphorus from sewage. However, phosphorus recovery from iron phosphorus containing sewage sludge, without incineration, is not yet economical. We believe, increasing the knowledge about iron-phosphorus speciation in sewage sludge can help to identify new routes...

Global occurrence and emission of rotaviruses to surface waters

Group A rotaviruses (RV) are the major cause of acute gastroenteritis in infants and young children globally. Waterborne transmission of RV and the presence of RV in water sources are of major public health importance. In this paper, we present the Global Waterborne Pathogen model for RV (GloWPa-Rota model) to estimate the global distribution...