Photodynamic inactivation (PDI) may be a very promising alternative method for the antimicrobial treatment of periodontitis. Several studies have demonstrated the sensitivity of subgingival flora to PDI using toluidine blue, methylene blue, and chlorin e6 derivatives. In the present study we report the activity of the Fotolon sensitizer, composed of chlorin e6 and polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), ag...

High current densities in microbial electrolysis cells (MECs) result from the predominance of various Geobacter species on the anode, but it is not known if archaeal communities similarly converge to one specific genus. MECs were examined here on the basis of maximum methane production and current density relative to the inoculum community structure. We used anaerobic digester (AD) sludge domin...

The anaerobic digestion (AD) and microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) coupled system has been proved to be a promising process for biomethane production. In this paper, it was found that by co-cultivating Geobacter with Methanosarcina in an AD-MEC coupled system, methane yield was further increased by 24.1%, achieving to 360.2 mL/g-COD, which was comparable to the theoretical methane yield of an a...

Autotrophic nitrogen removal through sequential partial nitritation and anammox reactions can be achieved in biofilm reactors by controlling the oxygen concentration in the bulk liquid in such a way that nitrite oxidizers are outcompeted by anammox bacteria. In the case of granular sludge reactors, the granule size may influence the optimal range of oxygen concentration, as has been confirmed i...

The need to reduce energy input and enhance energy recovery from wastewater is driving renewed interest in high-rate activated sludge treatment (i.e. short hydraulic and solids retention times (HRT and SRT, respectively)). This process generates short SRT activated sludge stream, which should be highly degradable. However, the evaluation of anaerobic digestion of short SRT sludge has been limit...

The effects of nitrogen oxides on anammox bacteria are not well known. Therefore, anammox bacteria were exposed to 3,500 ppm nitric oxide (NO) in the gas phase. The anammox bacteria were not inhibited by the high NO concentration but rather used it to oxidize additional ammonium to dinitrogen gas under conditions relevant to wastewater treatment.

Partial nitrification techniques, such as the continuously aerated SHARON process, have been denoted for quite a while as very promising for improved sustainability of wastewater treatment. Combination of such a SHARON process with the Anammox process, where ammonium is oxidised with nitrite to nitrogen gas under anoxic conditions, leads to cost-efficient and sustainable nitrogen removal from c...

Hydrogen is an environmentally friendly biofuel which, if widely used, could reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions. The main barrier to the widespread use of hydrogen for power generation lack technologically feasible and—more importantly—cost-effective methods production and storage. So far, has been produced using thermochemical (such as gasification, pyrolysis or water electrolysis) bi...

By the use of Cr-39 particle track detectors immersed in the electrolyte, we confirm that a nuclear reaction of as-yet unknown nature can take place during electrolysis. With Li2SO4 dissolved in D2O or H2O and either Pd or Ni as cathodes, a very large statistical difference in nuclear track generation is found between detector chips immersed during electrolysis and the control chips immersed in...