Biochar filters as an on-farm treatment to reduce pathogens when irrigating with wastewater-polluted sources

Perez-Mercado, Luis Fernando; Lalander, Cecilia; Joel, Abraham; Ottoson, Jakob; Dalahmeh, Sahar; Vinnerås, Björn

doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2019.109295

Cited by 47 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Materials other than sand have also been studied. Perez-Mercado et al [73] explored the performance of biochar in reducing bacterial indicators from wastewater, with varying success.…”

Section: Pathogen Removalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reactive Barriers for Renaturalization of Reclaimed Water during Soil Aquifer Treatment

Valhondo

Carrera

Martinez-Landa

et al. 2020

Water

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Managed aquifer recharge (MAR) is known to increase available water quantity and to improve water quality. However, its implementation is hindered by the concern of polluting aquifers, which might lead to onerous treatment and regulatory requirements for the source water. These requirements might make MAR unsustainable both economically and energetically. To address these concerns, we tested reactive barriers laid at the bottom of infiltration basins to enhance water quality improvement during soil passage. The goal of the barriers was to (1) provide a range of sorption sites to favor the retention of chemical contaminants and pathogens; (2) favor the development of a sequence of redox states to promote the degradation of the most recalcitrant chemical contaminants; and (3) promote the growth of plants both to reduce clogging, and to supply organic carbon and sorption sites. We summarized our experience to show that the barriers did enhance the removal of organic pollutants of concern (e.g., pharmaceuticals and personal care products). However, the barriers did not increase the removal of pathogens beyond traditional MAR systems. We reviewed the literature to suggest improvements on the design of the system to improve pathogen attenuation and to address antibiotic resistance gene transfer.

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“…Materials other than sand have also been studied. Perez-Mercado et al [73] explored the performance of biochar in reducing bacterial indicators from wastewater, with varying success.…”

Section: Pathogen Removalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reactive Barriers for Renaturalization of Reclaimed Water during Soil Aquifer Treatment

Valhondo

Carrera

Martinez-Landa

et al. 2020

Water

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…To date, biochar-based filters have been an attempt to advance the engineered application of biochar. Sand filters and biofilters amended with biochar (Kaetzl et al, 2019;Perez-Mercado et al, 2019), and filters made of biochar-clay composite (Chaukura et al, 2020), all have shown the improvements in wastewater treatment performance. Notably, a pilot-scale biochar-based wastewater treatment system called N-E-W Tech™ was built and patented by Greg Möller from the University of Idaho in 2015 (https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/uinews/item/n-e-w-techproject-proposes-better-water-treatment-system.html).…”

Section: Current Application Of Biochar In Wastewater Treatment Facilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peer Review #1 of "Recent advances in biochar application for water and wastewater treatment: a review (v0.2)"

2020

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In the past decade, researchers have carried out a massive amount of research on the application of biochar for contaminants removal from aqueous solutions. As an emerging sorbent with great potential, biochar has shown significant advantages such as the broad sources of feedstocks, easy preparation process, and favorable surface and structural properties. This review provides an overview of recent advances in biochar application in water and wastewater treatment, including a brief discussion of the involved sorption mechanisms of contaminants removal, as well as the biochar modification methods. Furthermore, environmental concerns of biochar that need to be paid attention to and future research directions are put forward to promote the further application of biochar in practical water and wastewater treatment.

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“…The efficiency of single-pass and vertical flow biochar filters in removing solids, organic matter, pathogen indicators and micropollutants from OWTSs has been assessed in previous studies [2,[17][18][19][20]. These unsaturated filters are designed to remove organic pollutants, with no consideration to removing nitrogen by denitrification.…”

Section: Of 13mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Other studies have reported similar removal of bacteria using biochar filters. For example, Perez-Mercado, Lalander [20] reported 1.6-4.5 log 10 unit removal of E. coli and enterococci bacteria from vertical flow biochar filters treating irrigation water. The efficiency of removal of microbes from wastewater by passage through filters depends on the adsorption capacity of the filter material, the characteristics of the biofilm formed on filter surfaces and physical entrapment (straining) in small pore spaces [32][33][34].…”

Section: Pathogen Removalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combined Vertical-Horizontal Flow Biochar Filter for Onsite Wastewater Treatment—Removal of Organic Matter, Nitrogen and Pathogens

2019

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This study investigated the performance of a combined vertical-horizontal flow biochar filter (VFF-HFF) system in terms of organic matter, total nitrogen (Tot-N), Escherichia coli and Salmonella removal and explored the effects of hydraulic loading rate (HLR) on pollutant removal. The combined VFF-HFF system used biochar as the filter medium and comprised two stacked sections: (i) an aerobic vertical flow filter (VFF) in which the wastewater percolated through the biochar medium in unsaturated mode and (ii) a horizontal flow filter (HFF), in which the biochar was saturated with water and had limited access to air, to enable anaerobic conditions and enhance the denitrification process. The system was tested over 126 weeks using real wastewater applied at different HLR (23, 31, 39 L m−2 day−1). The results showed that long-term removal of organic matter in the entire system was 93 ± 3%, with most (87 ± 5%) occurring in the VFF. For Tot-N, the long-term removal was 71 ± 12%, with increasing trends for nitrification in the VFF and denitrification in the HFF. Mean long-term nitrification efficiency in the VFF was 65 ± 15% and mean long-term denitrification efficiency in the HFF 49 ± 14%. Increasing HLR from 23 to 31 L m−2 day−1 increased the nitrification efficiency from 42 to 61%. Increasing the HLR further to 39 L m−2 day−1 decreased the denitrification efficiency from 45 to 25%. HLR had no significant effects on VFF and HFF performance in terms of E. coli and Salmonella removal, although the VFF achieved a 1.09–2.1 log10 unit reduction and the HFF achieved a 2.48–3.39 log10 unit reduction. Thus, long-term performance, i.e., removal of pollutants measured during the last 52 weeks of the experiment, was satisfactory in terms of organic matter and nitrogen removal, with no signs of clogging, indicating good robustness of the combined VFF-HFF biochar filter system.

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Biochar filters as an on-farm treatment to reduce pathogens when irrigating with wastewater-polluted sources

Cited by 47 publications

References 33 publications

Reactive Barriers for Renaturalization of Reclaimed Water during Soil Aquifer Treatment

Reactive Barriers for Renaturalization of Reclaimed Water during Soil Aquifer Treatment

Peer Review #1 of "Recent advances in biochar application for water and wastewater treatment: a review (v0.2)"

Combined Vertical-Horizontal Flow Biochar Filter for Onsite Wastewater Treatment—Removal of Organic Matter, Nitrogen and Pathogens

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