Sergio Collado

Catalytic wet oxidation of thiocyanate with homogeneous copper(II) sulphate catalyst

The wet oxidation of thiocyanate has been investigated in a semi-batch reactor at temperatures between 423 and 473 K and pressures between 6.1 x 10(3) and 1.0 x 10(4)kPa in the presence of copper(II) sulphate as catalyst. The effects of copper concentration, initial thiocyanate concentration, pressure and temperature on the reaction rate were analyzed and the main products of reaction were identified. A kinetic model for the Cu-catalyzed reaction is here proposed, including temperature, oxygen concentration, and the reduction of Cu(2+) to Cu(+) that gives an accurate prediction of the oxidation process under the assayed conditions. A mechanistic model based on the formation of a transition complex between a copper cation and two thiocyanate anions has been proposed for the catalytic wet oxidation.

Toxicity of graphene oxide on growth and metabolism of Pseudomonas putida

The increasing consumption of graphene derivatives leads to greater presence of these materials in wastewater treatment plants and ecological systems. The toxicity effect of graphene oxide (GO) on the microbial functions involved in the biological wastewater treatment process is studied, using Pseudomonas putida and salicylic acid (SA) as bacterial and pollutant models. A multiparametric flow cytometry (FC) method has been developed to measure the metabolic activity and viability of P. putida in contact with GO. A continuous reduction in the percentages of viable cells and a slight increase, lower than 5%, in the percentages of damaged and dead cells, suggest that P. putida in contact with GO loses the membrane integrity but preserves metabolic activity. The growth of P. putida was strongly inhibited by GO, since 0.05mgmL(-1) of GO reduced the maximum growth by a third, and the inhibition was considerably greater for GO concentrations higher than 0.1mgmL(-1). The specific SA removal rate decreased with GO concentration up to 0.1mgmL(-1) indicating that while GO always reduces the growth of P. putida, for concentrations higher than 0.1mgmL(-1), it also reduces its activity. Similar behaviour is observed using simulated urban and industrial wastewaters, the observed effects being more acute in the industrial wastewaters.

Wet oxidation of salicylic acid solutions.

Salicylic acid is a frequent pollutant in several industrial wastewaters. Uncatalyzed wet air oxidation, which is a promising technique for the treatment of phenolic effluents, has not been analyzed yet for the removal of salicylic acid. The effect of different conditions of pH (1.3-12.3), pressure (1.0-4.1 MPa), temperature (413-443 K), and initial concentrations (1.45-14.50 mM) on the wet oxidation of salicylate/salicylic acid solutions have here been investigated. The pH value of the reaction media was found to be a key parameter for the rate of the oxidation process with an optimum at pH 3.1, when the concentrations of salicylic acid and salicylate were similar. The oxidation reaction followed pseudofirst-order kinetics with respect to salicylic acid and 0.82 order with respect to dissolved oxygen. Additionally, the evolution of the color during the wet oxidation was analyzed and discussed in relation with the formation of intermediate compounds. Then, a reaction pathway for the noncatalytic wet oxidation of the salicylic acid was proposed.

Decision criteria for the selection of wet oxidation and conventional biological treatment.

The suitability of wet oxidation or biological treatments for the degradation of industrial wastewaters is here discussed. Advantages of these operations, either singly or in combination, are discussed on the basis of previous experimental results from laboratory and industry. Decision diagrams for the selection of conventional biological treatment, wet oxidation or a combination of both techniques are suggested according to the type of pollutant, its concentration and the wastewater flow rate.

Valuable compounds from sewage sludge by thermal hydrolysis and wet oxidation. A review

Sewage sludge is considered a costly waste, whose benefit has received a lot of attention for decades. In this sense, a variety of promising technologies, such as thermal hydrolysis and wet oxidation, are currently employed. Thermal hydrolysis is used as a pretreatment step ahead of anaerobic digestion processes and wet oxidation is intended for the solubilization and partial oxidation of the sludge. Such processes could be utilized for solubilizing polysaccharides, lipids, fragments of them and phosphorus (thermal hydrolysis) or for generating carboxylic acids (wet oxidation). This article compiles the available information on the production of valuable chemicals by these techniques and comments on their main features. Temperature, reaction duration times and sludge characteristics influence the experimental results significantly, but only the first two variables have been thoroughly studied. For thermal hydrolysis, a rise of temperature led to an increase in the solubilized biomolecules, but also to a greater decomposition of proteins and undesirable reactions of carbohydrates with themselves or with proteins. At constant temperature, the amounts of substances that can be recovered tend to become time independent after several minutes. Diluted and activated sludges seem to be more readily hydrolyzable than the thickened and primary ones. For wet oxidation, the dependence of the production of carboxylic acids with temperature and time is not simple: their concentration can increase, decrease or go through a maximum. At high temperatures, acetic acid is the main carboxylic acid obtained. Concentrated, fermented and secondary sludge seem to be more suitable for yielding higher amounts of acid than diluted, undigested and primary ones.

Pseudomonas putida response in membrane bioreactors under salicylic acid-induced stress conditions

Starvation and changing feeding conditions are frequently characteristics of wastewater treatment plants. They are typical causes of unsteady-state operation of biological systems and provoke cellular stress. The response of a membrane bioreactor functioning under feed-induced stress conditions is studied here. In order to simplify and considerably amplify the response to stress and to obtain a reference model, a pure culture of Pseudomonas putida was selected instead of an activated sludge and a sole substrate (salicylic acid) was employed. The system degraded salicylic acid at 100-1100mg/L with a high level of efficiency, showed rapid acclimation without substrate or product inhibition phenomena and good stability in response to unsteady states caused by feed variations. Under starvation conditions, specific degradation rates of around 15mg/gh were achieved during the adaptation of the biomass to the new conditions and no biofilm formation was observed during the first days of experimentation using an initial substrate to microorganisms ratio lower than 0.1. When substrate was added to the reactor as pulses resulting in rapidly changing concentrations, P. putida growth was observed only for substrate to microorganism ratios higher than 0.6, with a maximum YX/S of 0.5g/g. Biofilm development under changing feeding conditions was fast, biomass detachment only being significant for biomass concentrations on the membrane surface that were higher than 16g/m(2).

Simultaneous oxidation of cyanide and thiocyanate at high pressure and temperature

Thiocyanate and cyanide are important contaminants that frequently appear mixed in industrial effluents. In this work the wet oxidation of mixtures of both compounds, simulating real compositions, was carried out in a semi-batch reactor at temperature between 393 K and 483 K and pressure in the range of 2.0-8.0 MPa. The presence of cyanide (3.85 mM) increased the kinetic constant of thiocyanate degradation by a factor of 1.6, in comparison to the value obtained for the individual degradation of thiocyanate, (5.95 ± 0.05) × 10(-5)s(-1). On the other hand, the addition of thiocyanate (0.98 mM) decreased the degradation rate of cyanide by 16%. This revealed the existence of synergistic and inhibitory phenomena between these two species. Additionally, cyanide was identified as an intermediate in the oxidation of thiocyanate, and formate, ammonia and sulfate were found to be the main reaction products. Taking into account the experimental data, a reaction pathway for the simultaneous wet oxidation of both pollutants was proposed. Two parallel reactions beginning from cyanate as intermediate were considered, one yielding ammonia and formate and the other giving carbon dioxide and nitrogen as final products.

Effect of intermediate compounds and products on wet oxidation and biodegradation rates of pharmaceutical compounds

Kinetics of pure compounds in batch agitated reactors are useful data to clarify the characteristics of a given reaction, but they frequently do not provide the required information to design industrial mixed continuous processes because in this case the final and intermediate products interact with the reaction of interest, due to backmixing effects. Simultaneously, the presence and transformations of other compounds, frequent in industrial wastewater treatments, adds more complexity to these types of interactions, whose effect can be different, favorable or unfavorable, for chemical or biological reactions. In this work, batch laboratory reactor data were obtained for the wet oxidation and biodegradation of four phenolic compounds present in a pharmaceutical wastewater and then compared with those collected from industrial continuous stirred tank reactors. For wet oxidation, batch laboratory degradation rates were significantly lower than those found in industrial continuous stirred operation. This behavior was explained by a different distribution of intermediate compounds in lab and industrial treatments, caused by the degree of backmixing and the synergistic effects between phenolic compounds (matrix effects). On the other hand, the specific utilization rates during aerobic biodegradation in the continuous industrial operation were lower than those measured in the laboratory, due to the simultaneous presence of the four pollutants in the industrial process (matrix effects) increasing the inhibitory effects of these compounds and its intermediates.

UNDERSTANDING THE SIMULTANEOUS BIODEGRADATION OF THIOCYANATE AND SALICYLIC ACID BY PARACOCCUS THIOCYANATUSAND PSEUDOMONAS PUTIDA

Phenolic and cyanide compounds, which frequently appear mixed in several industrial effluents, are difficult to be biodegraded under certain conditions. In this work, salicylic acid (SA) and thiocyanate (SCN−) were selected as model pollutants of these two families and experiments of biodegradation with specific microorganisms were developed. It was found that the best well-known bacteria able to biodegrade each one of these pollutants, Pseudomonas putida for SA and Paracoccus thiocyanatus for SCN−, do not biodegrade the other one. Therefore, the co-culture was required, producing interesting interaction phenomena. When both pollutants were simultaneously biodegraded, a commensalism effect was observed improving SCN− removal. Experimental data for SCN− and SA removals were successfully fitted to zero reaction kinetic orders, with induction time in the case of SCN−, and substrate dependences were fitted to Tessier models. A flow cytometry method was developed and employed to obtain the evolution of the viable, damaged and dead cells for different substrate concentration and the degree of agglomeration in the co-culture experiments.

Life cycle assessment of introducing an anaerobic digester in a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Spain

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is being established as a standard technology to recover some of the energy contained in the sludge in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as biogas, allowing an economy in electricity and heating and a decrease in climate gas emission. The purpose of this study was to quantify the contributions to the total environmental impact of the plant using life cycle assessment methodology. In this work, data from real operation during 2012 of a municipal WWTP were utilized as the basis to determine the impact of including AD in the process. The climate change human health was the most important impact category when AD was included in the treatment (Scenario 1), especially due to fossil carbon dioxide emissions. Without AD (Scenario 2), increased emissions of greenhouse gases, mostly derived from the use of electricity, provoked a rise in the climate change categories. Biogas utilization was able to provide 47% of the energy required in the WWTP in Scenario 1. Results obtained make Scenario 1 the better environmental choice by far, mainly due to the use of the digested sludge as fertilizer.