We investigated nitrogen-cycle bacterial communities in activated sludge from 8 municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Redundancy analyses (RDA) showed that temperature was the most significant driving force in shaping microbial community structure, followed by influent NH4+ and total nitrogen (TN). The diversity of ammonia oxidizing and nitrite reducing bacteria were investigated by th...

The successful management of wastewater sludge for small-scale, urban wastewater treatment plants, (WWTPs), faces several financial and environmental challenges. Common management strategies stabilize sludge for land disposal by microbial processes or heat. Such approaches require large footprint processing facilities or high energy costs. A new approach considers converting sludge to fuel whic...

A 17beta-estradiol-utilizing bacterium, Sphingomonas strain KC8, was characterized in terms of its utilization kinetics toward 17beta-estradiol, estrone, and testosterone. The maximum specific substrate utilization rates (q(m)) are 0.37, 0.50, and 0.17 mg-substrate/mg-protein/day for 17beta-estradiol, estrone, and testosterone, respectively. The half-velocity constants (K(s)) are 1.9 mg/L for 1...

Effect of ecological variables on community assembly of heterotrophic bacteria at eight full-scale and two pilot-scale activated sludge wastewater treatment plants (AS-WWTPs) were explored by pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons. In total, 39 samples covering a range of abiotic factors spread over space and time were analyzed. A core bacterial community of 24 families detected in at least ...

Perfluorinated substances are listed among emerging contaminants because they are globally distributed, environmentally persistent, bioaccumulative and potentially harmful. In a three-year monitoring campaign (2010-2013) we investigated the occurrence, sources and fate of nine perfluoroalkylcarboxylic acids and three perfluoroalkylsulfonic acids, in the most industrialized region of Italy. Comp...

The final effluents of two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa were evaluated for their physicochemical and microbiological qualities over a period of 12 months. The physicochemical parameters assessed ranged as follows both plants. The ranges of values for the physicochemical are: pH (3.9-8.6), total dissolved solids (86.50-336.3 mg/L), electrical c...

The final effluents of three (Alice, Dimbaza, and East London) wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) were evaluated to determine their physicochemical quality and prevalence of multiple antibiotics resistant (MAR) Pseudomonas species, between August 2007 and July 2008. The annual mean total Pseudomonas count (TPC) was 1.20 × 10(4) (cfu/100 mL), 1.08 × 10(4) (cfu/100 mL), and 2.66 × 10(4) (cfu/100...

We assessed the occurrence of Vibrio pathogens in the final effluents of five wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) located in Amathole and Chris Hani District Municipalities in South Africa over a 12 months period between September 2012 and August 2013 using standard membrane filtration technique followed by cultivation on thiosulphate citrate-bile salts-sucrose (TCBS) agar. The identities of th...

This thesis presents a general model for the carbon footprints analysis of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. In previous research, the issue of global warming is often related to traditional industries with high carbon dioxide (C0 2) emissions, such as power plants and transportation. However, the analyses of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) h...

Antibiotics and antibiotic resistant bacteria enter wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), an environment where resistance genes can potentially spread and exchange between microbes. Several antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) were quantified using qPCR in three WWTPs of decreasing capacity located in Helsinki, Tallinn, and Tartu, respectively: sulphonamide resistance genes (sul1 and sul2), tetrac...