Spatial extent and ecotoxicological risk assessment of a micropollutant-contaminated wastewater plume in Lake Geneva

In this study, the spatial extent of a wastewater-influenced water mass (plume) originating from a wastewater treatment plant outlet in Vidy Bay (Lake Geneva) was monitored by two manned submersibles from June to August 2011. The main goal was to assess whether micropollutants in the wastewater mass cause an ecotoxicological risk to the aquatic environment, and to determine how far the zone of risk extends beyond the wastewater outlet. Real-time measurements of elevated electrical conductivity were used as a proxy to indicate the presence of wastewater-influenced water. Conductivity was highest in immediate proximity to the wastewater outlet, though if all measurements obtained over the duration of the sampling campaign were integrated, elevated conductivity extended over an area of at least 1km2 surrounding the outlet. Additionally, water samples were collected within and outside Vidy Bay, and were analyzed for 39 micropollutants (pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and corrosion inhibitors). Micropollutant concentrations were generally in the low ng/L range, though for some substances >100ng/L was measured. The concentrations of most pharmaceuticals, which are primarily wastewater-derived, decreased with decreasing conductivity and with increasing distance from the wastewater outlet. Pesticide concentrations, in contrast, were homogeneous throughout Vidy Bay and the lake. An ecotoxicological risk assessment based on the cumulative risk exerted by all measured substances indicated that the wastewater caused a zone of potential ecotoxicological risk that extended well into the deep lake and in the direction of a downstream drinking water intake

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Removal of trace organic contaminants from wastewater by superfine powdered activated carbon (SPAC) is neither affected by SPAC dispersal nor coagulation

Powdered activated carbon (PAC) is increasingly used as tertiary treatment for the removal of trace organic contaminants (TrOCs) from wastewater (WW). To enhance the sorption kinetics and capacity, the PAC particles can be milled down to super fine powdered activated carbon (SPAC). However, the small-grained SPAC particles are prone to aggregation, which may impact their treatment performance. In this study we examined the effect of SPAC dispersion and aggregation on TrOCs removal kinetics and sorption capacity. Specifically, we assessed how two interventions that modulate the apparent size of SPAC - ultrasonication and coagulation - affect the uptake of TrOCs in secondary WW effluent. We quantified the removal of fourteen TrOCs, of which twelve are indicator substances for micropollutant removal in WWTPs as designated by the Swiss Water Protection Ordinance. We determined that at high SPAC doses (> 1.6 mgSPAC/mg Dissolved Organic Carbon [DOC]), the TrOC removal kinetics were fast even for aggregated SPAC, such that SPAC dispersal by ultrasonication yielded no benefit. At low SPAC doses (< 1.6 mgSPAC/mgDOC) and contact times (< 2 minutes) ultrasonication was beneficial, in particular if the SPAC particles reached complete dispersion prior to exposure to TrOCs. However, the energy consumption of such an ultrasonication step should be carefully weighed against the additional energy requirement associated with using a higher SPAC dose. Finally, a coagulant to mitigate membrane fouling can be added simultaneously with the SPAC without compromising the TrOC removal efficiency. We conclude that under realistic SPAC application scenarios in WWTPs, interventions that disperse SPAC during TrOC sorption are not necessary, and processes that aggregate SPAC are acceptable

Super-fine powdered activated carbon (SPAC) for efficient removal of micropollutants from wastewater treatment plant effluent

In an effort to mitigate the discharge of micropollutants to surface waters, adsorption of micropollutants onto powdered activated carbon (PAC) after conventional wastewater treatment has been identified as a promising technology for enhanced removal of pharmaceuticals and pesticides from wastewater. We investigated the effectiveness of super-fine powdered activated carbon, SPAC, (ca. 1 µm mean particle diameter) in comparison to regular-sized PAC (17-37 µm mean diameter) for the optimization of micropollutant removal from wastewater. Adsorption isotherms and batch kinetic experiments were performed for 10 representative micropollutants (bezafibrate, benzotriazole, carbamazepine, diclofenac, gabapentin mecoprop, metoprolol, ofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim) onto three commercial PACs and their super-fine variants in carbonate buffer and in wastewater effluent. SPAC showed substantially faster adsorption kinetics of all micropollutants than conventional PAC, regardless of the micropollutant adsorption affinity and the solution matrix. The total adsorptive capacities of SPAC were similar to those of PAC for two of the three tested carbon materials, in all tested waters. However, in effluent wastewater, the presence of effluent organic matter adversely affected micropollutant removal, resulting in lower removal efficiencies especially for micropollutants with low affinity for adsorbent particles in comparison to pure water. In comparison to PAC, SPAC application resulted in up to two-fold enhanced dissolved organic carbon (DOC) removal from effluent wastewater. The more efficient adsorption process using SPAC translates into a reduction of contact time and contact tank size as well as reduced carbon dosing for a targeted micropollutant removal. In the tested effluent wastewater (5 mg/L DOC), the necessary dose to achieve 80% average removal of indicator micropollutants (benzotriazole, diclofenac, carbamazepine, mecoprop and sulfamethoxazole) ranged between 13-15 mg/L. These promising results warrant pilot-scale tests using super-fine PAC as an alternative to PAC for more efficient micropollutant removal

Pharmaceuticals and their human metabolites in Lake Geneva: occurrence, fate and ecotoxicological relevance

This study assesses the presence, fate and effects of five environmentally relevant pharmaceuticals and eight of their corresponding human metabolites in Lake Geneva. Over a 10-month period, lake samples were taken at various depths and locations in the Vidy Bay. Among the targeted metabolites, six were detected with concentrations ranging from 5 to > 100 ng∙L-1. The highest concentrations were detected above the wastewater treatment plant outfall, supporting the assumption that wastewater represents the main source of human metabolites to the lake. The metabolites were less recalcitrant to environmental degradation than their parent. Nevertheless, their presence in the aquatic environment may lead to an increase of the ecotoxicological risk

Micropollutant dynamics in Vidy Bay - A coupled hydrodynamic-photolysis model to assess the spatial extent of ecotoxicological risk

The direct discharge of effluent wastewater into Vidy Bay (Lake Geneva) results in the formation of an effluent plume with locally high concentrations of wastewater-derived micropollutants. The micropollutant hotspots above the wastewater outfall present a potential ecotoxicological risk, yet the spatial extent of the plume and the associated ecotoxicological risk zone remain unclear. This work combines the two main processes affecting the spreading of the plume, namely dilution of micropollutants due to mixing and degradation by photolysis, into a coupled hydrodynamic-photolysis model, with which we estimated the spatial extent of the risk zone in Vidy Bay. The concentration of micropollutants around the wastewater outfall was simulated for typical wind scenarios and seasons relevant to Vidy Bay, and the resulting ecotoxicological risk was evaluated. Specifically, we determined the direct and indirect photolysis rate constants for 24 wastewater-derived micropollutants, and implemented these in a hydrodynamic particle tracking model, which tracked the movement of water parcels from the wastewater outfall. Simulations showed that owing to thermal stratification, the zone of ecotoxicological risk is largest in summer and extends horizontally over 300 m from the outfall. Photolysis processes contribute to reducing the plume extent mainly under unstratified conditions when the plume surfaces. Moreover, it was shown that only a few compounds, mainly antibiotics, dominate the total ecotoxicological risk