Combining Short- and Long-Read Sequencing Technologies to Identify SARS-CoV-2 Variants in Wastewater.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was used to track the evolution and emergence of variant lineages and gauge infection levels in the community, informing appropriate public health responses without relying solely on clinical testing. As more sublineages were discovered, it increased the difficulty in identifying distinct variants in a mixed population sample, particularly those without a known lineage. Here, we compare the sequencing technology from Illumina and from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, in order to determine their efficacy at detecting variants of differing abundance, using 248 wastewater samples from various Quebec and Ontario cities.

A comprehensive, open-source data model for wastewater-based epidemiology.

The recent SARS-COV-2 pandemic has sparked the adoption of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) as a low-cost way to monitor the health of populations. In parallel, the pandemic has encouraged researchers to openly share their data to serve the public better and accelerate science. However, environmental surveillance data are highly dependent on context and are difficult to interpret meaningfully across sites.

Assessing the equivalence of WRRF regulations using dynamic model simulations.

A wide diversity of regulatory practices for wastewater resource recovery plants exists throughout the world. This contribution aims to highlight the implications of choosing particular permitting structures and investigate the equivalence of effluent standards in terms of limit values and compliance assessment specifications. These factors heavily affect the true performance that a treatment plant has to attain and thus the required plant capacity and operation.

Wastewater-based epidemiology: the crucial role of viral shedding dynamics in small communities.

Background: Wastewater surveillance (WWS) of pathogens is a rapidly evolving field owing to the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic, which brought about a paradigm shift in public health authorities for the management of pathogen outbreaks. However, the interpretation of WWS in terms of clinical cases remains a challenge, particularly in small communities where large variations in pathogen concentrations are routinely observed without a clear relation to clinical incident cases.

Methods: Results are presented for WWS from six municipalities in the eastern part of Canada during the spring of 2021.

The future of WRRF modelling - outlook and challenges.

The wastewater industry is currently facing dramatic changes, shifting away from energy-intensive wastewater treatment towards low-energy, sustainable technologies capable of achieving energy positive operation and resource recovery. The latter will shift the focus of the wastewater industry to how one could manage and extract resources from the wastewater, as opposed to the conventional paradigm of treatment. Debatable questions arise: can the more complex models be calibrated, or will additional unknowns be introduced? After almost 30 years using well-known International Water Association (IWA) models, should the community move to other components, processes, or model structures like 'black box' models, computational fluid dynamics techniques, etc.

How well-mixed is well mixed? Hydrodynamic-biokinetic model integration in an aerated tank of a full-scale water resource recovery facility.

Current water resource recovery facility (WRRF) models only consider local concentration variations caused by inadequate mixing to a very limited extent, which often leads to a need for (rigorous) calibration. The main objective of this study is to visualize local impacts of mixing by developing an integrated hydrodynamic-biokinetic model for an aeration compartment of a full-scale WRRF. Such a model is able to predict local variations in concentrations and thus allows judging their importance at a process level.

Dynamic modelling of solids in a full-scale activated sludge plant preceded by CEPT as a preliminary step for micropollutant removal modelling.

The presence of micropollutants in the environment has triggered research on quantifying and predicting their fate in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Since the removal of micropollutants is highly related to conventional pollutant removal and affected by hydraulics, aeration, biomass composition and solids concentration, the fate of these conventional pollutants and characteristics must be well predicted before tackling models to predict the fate of micropollutants. In light of this, the current paper presents the dynamic modelling of conventional pollutants undergoing activated sludge treatment using a limited set of additional daily composite data besides the routine data collected at a WWTP over one year.

Fate and mass balance of contaminants of emerging concern during wastewater treatment determined using the fractionated approach.

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are often poorly removed from wastewater using conventional treatment technologies and there is limited understanding of their fate during treatment. Inappropriate sampling strategies lead to inaccuracies in estimating removals of CECs. In this study, we used the "fractionated approach" that accounts for the residence time distribution (RTD) in treatment units to investigate the fate of 26 target CECs in a municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) that includes primary, secondary and tertiary treatment steps.

From the affinity constant to the half-saturation index: understanding conventional modeling concepts in novel wastewater treatment processes.

The "affinity constant" (KS) concept is applied in wastewater treatment models to incorporate the effect of substrate limitation on process performance. As an increasing number of wastewater treatment processes rely on low substrate concentrations, a proper understanding of these so-called constants is critical in order to soundly model and evaluate emerging treatment systems. In this paper, an in-depth analysis of the KS concept has been carried out, focusing on the different physical and biological phenomena that affect its observed value.

CFD study to determine the optimal configuration of aerators in a full-scale waste stabilization pond.

Aerated lagoons (ALs) are important variants of the pond wastewater treatment technology that have not received much attention in the literature. The hydraulic behaviour of ALs and especially the Facultative aerated lagoons (FALs) is very complex since the aeration in these systems is designed for oxygen transfer but not necessarily to create complete mixing. In this work, the energy expenditure of the aerators was studied by means of a scenario analysis.

Membrane bioreactor fouling behaviour assessment through principal component analysis and fuzzy clustering.

Adequate membrane bioreactor operation requires frequent evaluation of the membrane state. A data-driven approach based on principal component analysis (PCA) and fuzzy clustering extracting the necessary monitoring information solely out of transmembrane pressure data was investigated for this purpose. Out of three tested PCA techniques the two functional methods proved useful to cope with noise and outliers as opposed to the common standard PCA, while all of them presented similar capabilities for revealing data trends and patterns.

BSM-MBR: a benchmark simulation model to compare control and operational strategies for membrane bioreactors.

A benchmark simulation model for membrane bioreactors (BSM-MBR) was developed to evaluate operational and control strategies in terms of effluent quality and operational costs. The configuration of the existing BSM1 for conventional wastewater treatment plants was adapted using reactor volumes, pumped sludge flows and membrane filtration for the water-sludge separation. The BSM1 performance criteria were extended for an MBR taking into account additional pumping requirements for permeate production and aeration requirements for membrane fouling prevention.

The cost of a large-scale hollow fibre MBR.

A cost sensitivity analysis was carried out for a full-scale hollow fibre membrane bioreactor to quantify the effect of design choices and operational parameters on cost. Different options were subjected to a long term dynamic influent profile and evaluated using ASM1 for effluent quality, aeration requirements and sludge production. The results were used to calculate a net present value (NPV), incorporating both capital expenditure (capex), based on costs obtained from equipment manufacturers and full-scale plants, and operating expenditure (opex), accounting for energy demand, sludge production and chemical cleaning costs.

Model-based energy optimisation of a small-scale decentralised membrane bioreactor for urban reuse.

The energy consumption of a small-scale membrane bioreactor, treating high strength domestic wastewater for community level wastewater recycling, has been optimised using a dynamic model of the plant. ASM2d was chosen as biological process model to account for the presence of phosphate accumulating organisms. A tracer test was carried out to determine the hydraulic behaviour of the plant.