SARS-CoV-2 RNA Detection in Wastewater and Its Effective Correlation with Clinical Data during the Outbreak of COVID-19 in Salamanca.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are the final stage of the anthropogenic water cycle where a wide range of chemical and biological markers of human activity can be found. In COVID-19 disease contexts, wastewater surveillance has been used to infer community trends based on viral abundance and SARS-CoV-2 RNA variant composition, which has served to anticipate and establish appropriate protocols to prevent potential viral outbreaks. Numerous studies worldwide have provided reliable and robust tools to detect and quantify SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater, although due to the high dilution and degradation rate of the viral RNA in such samples, the detection limit of the pathogen has been a bottleneck for the proposed protocols so far.

Hydrogen production from urea in human urine using segregated systems.

Removal of nitrogen compounds through biological processes represents the highest energy consumption in conventional centralised wastewater treatment facilities. Alternatively, segregated systems, where wastewater is treated at its source, present the potential to provide value to nitrogen-rich compounds contained in wastewater like urea. This paper demonstrates the feasibility of a novel process to recover energy from human urine based on the pre-isolation of urea to decrease the energy requirements for its thermal decomposition compared to the conventional thermal treatment when in solution, followed by its decomposition into hydrogen.

Catalytic reduction of nitrate with Pd-InO.

This work presents a novel catalyst preparation method and the optimization of operation conditions for an effective NO conversion with a high selectivity and stability that guarantee water quality for human consumption. Catalytic reduction of NO and NO was carried out with Pd supported on InO under mild operation conditions (25 °C, 1 atm) with H and CO as reducing and acidifying agents, respectively. The catalyst was used in batch experiments showing the suppression of NO accumulation and low NH selectivity at acid pH.

Nitrite and free nitrous acid sludge pre-treatments to enhance methane production in continuous anaerobic digestion: Comparing process performance and associated costs.

Secondary sludge pre-treatment with free nitrous acid (FNA) has been proven to enhance methane production during anaerobic digestion. However, it is still unclear if the same enhancement can be achieved only using nitrite, without sludge acidification. In this paper, secondary sludge was pre-treated during 5 h with nitrite within the range of 50-250 mg NO-N/L at neutral pH (6.