Six artificial recharge pilot replicates to gain insight into water quality enhancement processes

The processes that control water quality improvement during artificial recharge (filtering, degradation, and adsorption) can be enhanced by adding a reactive barrier containing different types of sorption sites and promoting diverse redox states along the flow path, which increases the range of pollutants degraded. While this option looks attractive for renaturazing reclaimed water, three issues have to be analyzed prior to broad scale application: (1) a fair comparison between the system with and without reactive barrier; (2) the role of plants in prevention of clogging and addition of organic carbon; and (3) the removal of pathogens. Here, we describe a pilot installation built to address these issues within a waste water treatment plant that feeds on water reclaimed from the secondary outflow. The installation consists of six systems of recharge basin and aquifer with some variations in the design of the reactive barrier and the heterogeneity of the aquifer. We report preliminary results after one year of operation. We find that (1) the systems are efficient in obtaining a broad range of redox conditions (at least iron and manganese reducing), (2) contaminants of emerging concern are significantly removed (around 80% removal, but very sensitive to the compound), (3) pathogen indicators (E. coli and Enterococci) drop by some 3–5 log units, and (4) the recharge systems maintained infiltration capacity after one year of operation (only the system without plants and the one without reactive barrier displayed some clogging). Overall, the reactive barrier enhances somewhat the performance of the system, but the gain is not dramatic, which suggests that barrier composition needs to be improved.This study was supported by the Water Joint Programming Initiative (JPI)Water Challenges for a ChangingWorld 2014 through the project ACWAPUR (ACcelerated Water PURification during artificial recharge of aquifers: A tool to restore drinking water sources) and partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through PCIN-2015-245. We are very grateful to the staff of ‘Aguas de la Costa Brava' for their assistance, and to Ma Pau Serra-Roig and Ana Julia Acunha for their contribution to the chemical analysis and to Juli_a Garcia for his effort with the field site work.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Reactive barriers for renaturalization of reclaimed water during soil aquifer treatment

Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is known to increase available water quantity and to improve water quality. However, its implementation is hindered by the concern of polluting aquifers, which might lead to onerous treatment and regulatory requirements for the source water. These requirements might make MAR unsustainable both economically and energetically. To address these concerns, we tested reactive barriers laid at the bottom of infiltration basins to enhance water quality improvement during soil passage. The goal of the barriers was to (1) provide a range of sorption sites to favor the retention of chemical contaminants and pathogens; (2) favor the development of a sequence of redox states to promote the degradation of the most recalcitrant chemical contaminants; and (3) promote the growth of plants both to reduce clogging, and to supply organic carbon and sorption sites. We summarized our experience to show that the barriers did enhance the removal of organic pollutants of concern (e.g., pharmaceuticals and personal care products). However, the barriers did not increase the removal of pathogens beyond traditional MAR systems. We reviewed the literature to suggest improvements on the design of the system to improve pathogen attenuation and to address antibiotic resistance gene transfer.This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation CEX2018-000794-S), Water JPI (MARadentro-PCI2019-103603) and Catalan Water Agency (RESTORA-CA210/18/00040).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Monitoring and assessment of river pollurants: a step towards the implementation of risk based managemeent plans. Case studies of Portuguese river basins.

Postprint (published version

Europe aims to bridge science and water Management

Peer Reviewe

Interoperability and sensor communications in Help4Mood: Personal monitoring system to support the treatment of depression

Help4Mood aims to develop a platform to support the treatment of people with depression in their own home. Depression is one of the main causes of disability worldwide. For depression, it is essential to have a continuous control in order to check the patient status and avoid relapses. Thus, we propose Help4Mood, which is designed as a Personal Health System. It consists of a set of different wireless sensors whose data sink is centralized on a laptop and it is administered by a clinician that supports the treatment of depression. The outcome of the platform is available to the clinician in order to check the patient's status during the periodic appointments. The use of standards contributes to improve care delivery, optimize workflow and reduce ambiguity. For this reason Help4Mood is able to communicate with the Healthcare Provider using the standard of communications protocol Health Level Seven (HL7). In this work, we describe the main components, principal features of the Help4Mood and the results from the evaluation of the activity monitoring system on patients who had recovered from depression in Catalonia, Scotland and Romania. Updates caused by the results of the evaluation in the design of Wireless Sensor Network are included.Peer Reviewe

Interoperability and sensor communications in Help4Mood: Personal monitoring system to support the treatment of depression

Help4Mood aims to develop a platform to support the treatment of people with depression in their own home. Depression is one of the main causes of disability worldwide. For depression, it is essential to have a continuous control in order to check the patient status and avoid relapses. Thus, we propose Help4Mood, which is designed as a Personal Health System. It consists of a set of different wireless sensors whose data sink is centralized on a laptop and it is administered by a clinician that supports the treatment of depression. The outcome of the platform is available to the clinician in order to check the patient's status during the periodic appointments. The use of standards contributes to improve care delivery, optimize workflow and reduce ambiguity. For this reason Help4Mood is able to communicate with the Healthcare Provider using the standard of communications protocol Health Level Seven (HL7). In this work, we describe the main components, principal features of the Help4Mood and the results from the evaluation of the activity monitoring system on patients who had recovered from depression in Catalonia, Scotland and Romania. Updates caused by the results of the evaluation in the design of Wireless Sensor Network are included.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Interoperability and sensor communications in Help4Mood: Personal monitoring system to support the treatment of depression

Help4Mood aims to develop a platform to support the treatment of people with depression in their own home. Depression is one of the main causes of disability worldwide. For depression, it is essential to have a continuous control in order to check the patient status and avoid relapses. Thus, we propose Help4Mood, which is designed as a Personal Health System. It consists of a set of different wireless sensors whose data sink is centralized on a laptop and it is administered by a clinician that supports the treatment of depression. The outcome of the platform is available to the clinician in order to check the patient's status during the periodic appointments. The use of standards contributes to improve care delivery, optimize workflow and reduce ambiguity. For this reason Help4Mood is able to communicate with the Healthcare Provider using the standard of communications protocol Health Level Seven (HL7). In this work, we describe the main components, principal features of the Help4Mood and the results from the evaluation of the activity monitoring system on patients who had recovered from depression in Catalonia, Scotland and Romania. Updates caused by the results of the evaluation in the design of Wireless Sensor Network are included.Peer Reviewe

The re-engineering of VHF mobile radio services in the UK

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D52260/84 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Bioremediation of emerging micropollutants in irrigation water: the alternative of microalgae-based treatments

The present study evaluated the efficiency of a semi-closed horizontal tubular photobioreactor (PBR) at demonstrative scale to remove a total of 35 target compounds, including benzotriazoles, benzophenones, antibiotics and different pharmaceuticals present in irrigation water in a peri-urban rural area. This water run through an open channel and was a mixture of reclaimed wastewater from a nearby wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) and run-off from the different agricultural fields in the area. Most of the compounds studied are usually not fully eliminated during conventional wastewater treatment, which justifies the need to investigate alternative treatment strategies. A total of 21 of these compounds were detected in the irrigation water. Benzotriazoles were only partially removed after the microalgae treatment, with elimination rates similar to those of conventional WWTPs. The UV filter benzophenone-3 (BP3) showed variable removals, ranging from no elimination to 51%, whereas 4-methylbenzilidenecamphor (4MBC) was completely eliminated. Regarding pharmaceuticals, average removals were higher, in the range of 60–100%, with the exception of the antibiotics sulfamethoxazole (46%) and sulfapyridine, which was not removed. Despite the low biomass productivity of the PBR, parameters such as the size of the reactors, the specific mixed cultures developed and the high temperatures and pH in the closed system may account for the overall good results, The efficiency and sustainability of these systems make them a solid, feasible treatment choice.This research is sponsored by FEDER funds through Portugal 2020 (PT2020), by the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (COMPETE 2020) and national funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, under the projects: UID/EMS/00285/2020, POCI-01-0145-FEDER-00763 and Friction 4.0 (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-032089). The author, D.G. Andrade is supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through SFRH/BD/130196/2017 fellowship. All supports are gratefully acknowledged.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft