Publications by authors named "Davide Pinelli"

Drainage canal water (DCW), a mixture of Nile water, drainage water and municipal wastewater, is largely used for irrigation in the Nile Delta. Facultative lagoons (FL) and constructed wetlands (CWs) represent interesting options for DCW treatment before its agricultural re-use, but very few studies investigated their implementation in Egypt. This work aimed at developing at demonstration scale (250 m d) a FL + CW treatment train capable to turn DCW into an effluent reusable in agriculture.

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Among the available technologies for ammonium removal from wastewater, ion exchange represents one of the most promising ones in the perspective to recover ammonium and produce a fertilizing product. However, the vast majority of previous studies on ammonium ion exchange did not evaluate the process robustness under real operational conditions nor optimized the desorption step. In this paper, tests of ammonium removal and recovery were conducted on a metakaolin K-based geopolymer, compared with a high-performing Italian natural zeolite in K-form.

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Adsorption represents one of the most promising process for phosphorous (P) removal and recovery from municipal wastewater, but questions about its long-term stability remain. The goals of this work were (i) to assess changes in morphology and adsorption performances of hybrid anion exchanger (HAIX) Layne after 2.5 years of operation in a 10 m d demonstration plant fed with secondary-treated municipal wastewater, (ii) to optimize the Layne regeneration procedure, and (iii) to evaluate the suitability of the ion exchange model to describe P adsorption on Layne.

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In the Nile Delta, a complex network of canals collects drainage water from surface-irrigated fields but also from municipal wastewater. The goal of this work was to assess the technical, environmental, and financial feasibility of the upgrade of a drainage canal (DC) into either an in-stream constructed wetland (ICW) or a canalized facultative lagoon (CFL), in order to produce a water reusable in agriculture according to Egyptian law. The model-based design of the proposed technologies was derived from field experimental data for the ICW and laboratory data for the CFL.

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Background: 2,3-Butanediol (BD) is a largely used fossil-based platform chemical. The yield and productivity of bio-based BD fermentative production must be increased and cheaper substrates need to be identified, to make bio-based BD production more competitive. As BD bioproduction occurs under microaerobic conditions, a fine tuning and control of the oxygen transfer rate (OTR) is crucial to maximize BD yield and productivity.

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A procedure for the design of an aerobic cometabolic process for the on-site degradation of chlorinated solvents in a packed bed reactor was developed using groundwater from an aquifer contaminated by trichloroethylene (TCE) and 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane (TeCA). The work led to the selection of butane among five tested growth substrates, and to the development and characterization from the site's indigenous biomass of a suspended-cell consortium capable to degrade TCE (first order constant: 96 L gprotein(-1) day(-1) at 30 °C and 4.3 L gprotein(-1) day(-1) at 15 °C) with a 90 % mineralization of the organic chlorine.

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Batch tests of H2 production from glucose, molasses and cheese whey by suspended and immobilized cells of Thermotoga neapolitana were conducted to develop a kinetic model of the process. H2 production was inhibited by neither H2 (up to 0.7 mg L(-1)) nor O2 (up to 0.

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A kinetic study of butane uptake and trichloroethylene (TCE) aerobic cometabolism was conducted by two suspended-cell (15 and 30°C) and two attached-cell (15 and 30°C) consortia obtained from the indigenous biomass of a TCE-contaminated aquifer. The shift from suspended to attached cells resulted in an increase of butane (15 and 30°C) and TCE (15°C) biodegradation rates, and a significant decrease of butane inhibition on TCE biodegradation. The TCE 15°C maximum specific biodegradation rate was equal to 0.

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A novel aerobic/anaerobic/aerobic treatment was implemented in batch reactors containing aquifer materials from a site contaminated by tetrachloroethylene (PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), vinyl chloride (VC), 1,1,2-trichloroethane (1,1,2-TCA) and chloroform (CF). Consortia grown aerobically on methane, propane, n-pentane and n-hexane completely biodegraded the chlorinated solvent mixture, via aerobic cometabolism of VC, CF, TCE and 1,1,2-TCA, followed by PCE reductive dechlorination (RD) to 1,2-cis-dichlorothylene (cis-DCE) or TCE, and cis-DCE/TCE cometabolism in a further aerobic phase. n-Hexane was the best substrate.

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The ability of a Rhodococcus aetherovorans strain, BCP1, to grow on butane and to degrade chloroform in the 0-633 microM range (0-75.5 mg l(-1)) via aerobic cometabolism was investigated by means of resting-cell assays. BCP1 degraded chloroform with a complete mineralization of the organic Cl.

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The aerobic cometabolic biodegradation of a mixture of chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons (CAHs) including vinyl chloride (VC), cis- and trans-1,2-dichloroethylene (cis-DCE, trans-DCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), 1,1,2-trichloroethane (1,1,2-TCA) and 1,1,2,2-tetrachloroethane (1,1,2,2-TeCA) was investigated at both 25 and 17 degrees C by means of bioaugmented and non-bioaugmented sediment-groundwater slurry microcosm tests. The goals of the study were (i) to study the long-term aerobic biodegradation of a CAH mixture including a high-chlorinated solvent (1,1,2,2-TeCA) generally considered non-biodegradable in aerobic conditions; (ii) to investigate the efficacy of bioaugmentation with two types of internal inocula obtained from the indigenous biomass of the studied site; (iii) to identify the CAH-degrading bacteria. VC, methane and propane were utilized as growth substrates.

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The focus of this microcosm study was to monitor the performances of 17 butane-utilizing microcosms during a long-term (100-250 days) aerobic cometabolic depletion of chloroform (CF). The depletion of the contaminant began after a lag-time variable between 0 and 23 days. All microcosms quickly reached a pseudo steady-state condition, in terms of biomass concentration (with an average of 9.

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