Species Isolated from Sand Filter Biofilm at an Australian Drinking Water Treatment Works.

Three strains isolated by geosmin enrichment from a sand filter in an Australian drinking water treatment works were genome sequenced to identify their taxonomic placement, and a bench-scale batch experiment confirmed their geosmin-degrading capability. Using the average nucleotide identity based on the MUMmer algorithm (ANIm), pairwise digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH), and phylogenomic analyses, the strains were identified as species.

Stormwater monitoring using on-line UV-Vis spectroscopy.

Stormwater runoff contains a myriad of pollutants, including faecal microbes, and can pose a threat to urban water supplies, impacting both economic development and public health. Therefore, it is a necessity to implement a real-time hazard detection system that can collect a substantial amount of data, assisting water authorities to develop preventive strategies to ensure the control of hazards entering drinking water sources. An on-line UV-Vis spectrophotometer was applied in the field to collect real-time continuous data for various water quality parameters (nitrate, DOC, turbidity and total suspended solids) during three storm events in Mannum, Adelaide, Australia.

Carbon sequestration value of biosolids applied to soil: A global meta-analysis.

Biosolids produced at wastewater treatment facilities are extensively used in agricultural land and degraded mine sites to improve soil health and soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks. Many studies have reported increases in SOC due to application of biosolids to such sites. However, lack of a comprehensive quantification on overall trends and changes of magnitude in SOC remains.

Aquatic Phytotoxicity to Lemna minor of Three Commonly Used Drugs of Addiction in Australia.

The manufacturing and consumption of drugs of addiction has increased globally and their widespread occurrence in the environment is an emerging concern. This study evaluated the phytotoxicity of three compounds: methamphetamine, codeine and morphine; commonly reported in Australian urban water, to the aquatic plant Lemna minor under controlled conditions. L.

Transformation pathway and toxicity assessment of malathion in aqueous solution during UV photolysis and photocatalysis.

In drinking water treatment, complete mineralization of organophosphorus pesticides (OPPs) by UV-based advanced oxidation processes (UV AOPs) is rarely achieved. The formation of intermediate oxidation byproducts would likely have some profound effects on toxicity of the reaction solutions. This study investigated the intermediate oxidation byproducts, transformation pathway and toxicity of malathion solutions during the treatment processes of UV alone, UV/HO, UV/TiO and UV/Fenton.

Label-Free Bacterial Toxin Detection in Water Supplies Using Porous Silicon Nanochannel Sensors.

Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are the major component of the outer membrane of all Gram-negative bacteria and some cyanobacteria and are released during growth and cell death. LPS pose a potential health risk in water, causing acute respiratory illnesses, inhalation fever, and gastrointestinal disorders. The need for rapid and accurate detection of LPS has become a major priority to facilitate more timely and efficacious intervention and, hence, avoid unsafe water distribution.

Removal of emerging drugs of addiction by wastewater treatment and water recycling processes and impacts on effluent-associated environmental risk.

Drugs of addiction, have been recognized as potential contaminants of concern to the environment. Effluent wastewater discharge is a major source of contamination to aquatic receiving environments. A year-long monitoring program was undertaken in Australia to characterise the fate of four emerging drugs of addiction: methamphetamine; MDMA; pharmaceutical opioids: codeine and morphine and a metabolite: benzoylecgonine in four wastewater treatment plants operating with different secondary treatment technologies: conventional activated sludge (CAS), membrane bioreactors (MBR), integrated fixed-film AS (IFAS) and sequencing batch reactor (SBR).

Electrochemical Biosensing of Algal Toxins in Water: The Current State-of-the-Art.

Due to increasing stringency of water legislation and extreme consequences that failure to detect some contaminants in water can involve, there has been a strong interest in developing electrochemical biosensors for algal toxin detection during the past decade, evidenced by literature increasing from 2 journal papers pre-2009 to 24 between 2009 and 2018. In this context, this review has summarized recent progress of successful algal toxin detection in water using electrochemical biosensing techniques. Satisfactory detection recoveries using real environmental water samples and good sensor repeatability and reproducibility have been achieved, along with some excellent limit-of-detection (LOD) reported.

Occurrence, removal and environmental risk of markers of five drugs of abuse in urban wastewater systems in South Australia.

The occurrence and fate of five drugs of abuse in raw influent and treated effluent wastewater were investigated over a period of 1 year in the Adelaide region of South Australia. Four wastewater treatment plants were chosen for this study and monitored for five drugs which included cocaine in the form of its metabolite benzoylecgonine (BE), methamphetamine, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and two opioids (codeine and morphine) during the period April 2016 to February 2017. Alongside concentrations in raw sewage, the levels of drugs in the treated effluent were assessed and removal efficiencies were calculated.

Nanostructured Electrochemical Biosensors for Label-Free Detection of Water- and Food-Borne Pathogens.

The emergence of nanostructured materials has opened new horizons in the development of next generation biosensors. Being able to control the design of the electrode interface at the nanoscale combined with the intrinsic characteristics of the nanomaterials engenders novel biosensing platforms with improved capabilities. The purpose of this review is to provide a comprehensive and critical overview of the latest trends in emerging nanostructured electrochemical biosensors.

Analysis of chromium status in the revegetated flora of a tannery waste site and microcosm studies using earthworm E. fetida.

Chromium from tannery waste dump site causes significant environmental pollution affecting surrounding flora and fauna. The primary aims of this study were to survey vegetation, investigate the degree of soil pollution occurring near tannery waste dump site and make a systematic evaluation of soil contamination based on the chromium levels found in plants and earthworms from the impacted areas. This paper presents the pollution load of toxic heavy metals, and especially chromium, in 10 soil samples and 12 species of plants.

The impact of biosolids application on organic carbon and carbon dioxide fluxes in soil.

A field study was conducted on two texturally different soils to determine the influences of biosolids application on selected soil chemical properties and carbon dioxide fluxes. Two sites, located in Manildra (clay loam) and Grenfell (sandy loam), in Australia, were treated at a single level of 70 Mg ha biosolids. Soil samples were analyzed for SOC fractions, including total organic carbon (TOC), labile, and non-labile carbon contents.

Occurrence of illicit drugs in water and wastewater and their removal during wastewater treatment.

This review critically evaluates the types and concentrations of key illicit drugs (cocaine, amphetamines, cannabinoids, opioids and their metabolites) found in wastewater, surface water and drinking water sources worldwide and what is known on the effectiveness of wastewater treatment in removing such compounds. It is also important to amass information on the trends in specific drug use as well as the sources of such compounds that enter the environment and we review current international knowledge on this. There are regional differences in the types and quantities of illicit drug consumption and this is reflected in the quantities detected in water.

A Novel Fabrication Approach for Multifunctional Graphene-based Thin Film Nano-composite Membranes with Enhanced Desalination and Antibacterial Characteristics.

A practical fabrication technique is presented to tackle the trade-off between the water flux and salt rejection of thin film composite (TFC) reverse osmosis (RO) membranes through controlled creation of a thinner active selective polyamide (PA) layer. The new thin film nano-composite (TFNC) RO membranes were synthesized with multifunctional poly tannic acid-functionalized graphene oxide nanosheets (pTA-f-GO) embedded in its PA thin active layer, which is produced through interfacial polymerization. The incorporation of pTA-f-GOL into the fabricated TFNC membranes resulted in a thinner PA layer with lower roughness and higher hydrophilicity compared to pristine membrane.

Removal of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid from synthetic water by nanofiltration.

The removal of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid (AMPA) with synthetic water was carried out on a lab-scale nanofiltration unit using two membranes, NFX and NFW. The presence of humic acid and some inorganic matters (CaCl and NaCl) was tested in the experiment. The results demonstrate that NFX exhibits better separation performance than NFW.

Impact of prechlorination on organophosphorus pesticides during drinking water treatment: Removal and transformation to toxic oxon byproducts.

Prechlorination is commonly used to minimize operational problems associated with biological growth as well as taste and odor control during drinking water treatment. However, prechlorination can also oxidise micropollutants into intermediate byproducts. This could impose profound effects on the safety of the finished water if the transformed byproducts are more toxic and less removable.

Remediation of metalliferous mines, revegetation challenges and emerging prospects in semi-arid and arid conditions.

Understanding plant behaviour in polluted soils is critical for the sustainable remediation of metal-polluted sites including abandoned mines. Post-operational and abandoned metal mines particularly in semi-arid and arid zones are one of the major sources of pollution by soil erosion or plant hyperaccumulation bringing ecological impacts. We have selected from the literature 157 species belonging to 50 families to present a global overview of 'plants under action' against heavy metal pollution.

Single-Step Assembly of Multifunctional Poly(tannic acid)-Graphene Oxide Coating To Reduce Biofouling of Forward Osmosis Membranes.

Graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets have antibacterial properties that have been exploited as a biocidal agent used on desalination membrane surfaces in recent research. Nonetheless, improved strategies for efficient and stable attachment of GO nanosheets onto the membrane surface are still required for this idea to be commercially viable. To address this challenge, we adopted a novel, single-step surface modification approach using tannic acid cross-linked with polyethylene imine as a versatile platform to immobilize GO nanosheets to the surface of polyamide thin film composite forward osmosis (FO) membranes.

Porous silicon membrane-modified electrodes for label-free voltammetric detection of MS2 bacteriophage.

A proof of concept for the label-free detection of bacteriophage MS2, a model indicator of microbiological contamination, is validated in this work as a porous silicon (pSi) membrane-based electrochemical biosensor. PSi membranes were used to afford nanochannel architectures. The sensing mechanism was based on the nanochannel blockage caused by MS2 binding to immobilized capture antibodies.

Fine-Tuning the Surface of Forward Osmosis Membranes via Grafting Graphene Oxide: Performance Patterns and Biofouling Propensity.

Graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets were attached to the polyamide selective layer of thin film composite (TFC) forward osmosis (FO) membranes through a poly L-Lysine (PLL) intermediary using either layer-by-layer or hybrid (H) grafting strategies. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, zeta potential, and thermogravimetric analysis confirmed the successful attachment of GO/PLL, the surface modification enhancing both the hydrophilicity and smoothness of the membrane's surface demonstrated by water contact angle, atomic force microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy. The biofouling resistance of the FO membranes determined using an adenosine triphosphate bioluminescence test showed a 99% reduction in surviving bacteria for GO/PLL-H modified membranes compared to pristine membrane.

The role of methanol addition to water samples in reducing analyte adsorption and matrix effects in liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry.

Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) analysis coupled simply with water filtering before injection has proven to be a simple, economic and time-saving method for analyzing trace-level organic pollutants in aqueous environments. However, the linearity, precision and detection limits of such methods for late-eluting analytes were found to be much poorer than for early-eluting ones due to adsorption of the analytes in the operating system, such as sample vial, flow path and sample loop, creating problems in quantitative analysis. Addition of methanol (MeOH) into water samples as a modifier was shown to be effective in alleviating or even eliminating the negative effect on signal intensity for the late-eluting analytes and at the same time being able to reduce certain matrix effects for real water samples.

Electrochemical biosensors featuring oriented antibody immobilization via electrografted and self-assembled hydrazide chemistry.

Appropriate site-directed chemistry is essential to maximize the performance of immunosensors. We present two new functionalization strategies that preserve proper folding and binding potential of antibodies by forcing their oriented immobilization. Both strategies are based on the formation of hydrazone bonds between aldehyde groups on the Fc moieties of periodate-oxidized antibodies and hydrazide groups on functionalized gold electrodes.

A genetic and metabolic approach to redirection of biochemical pathways of Clostridium butyricum for enhancing hydrogen production.

Clostridium butyricum, a well known H(2) producing bacterium, produces lactate, butyrate, acetate, ethanol, and CO(2) as its main by-products from glucose. The conversion of pyruvate to lactate, butyrate and ethanol involves oxidation of NADH. It was hypothesized that the NADH could be increased if the formation of these by-products could be eliminated, resulting in enhancing H(2) yield.

Removal of cyanobacterial metabolites through wastewater treatment plant filters.

Wastewaters have the potential to proliferate excessive numbers of cyanobacteria due to high nutrient levels. This could translate to the production of metabolites, such as the saxitoxins, geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol (MIB), which can impair the quality of wastewater destined for re-use. Biological sand filtration was assessed for its ability to remove these metabolites from a wastewater.