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Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) constitute a promising technology to treat wastewater containing organic pollutants that are not easily biodegradable. They have received increasing attention in the research and development of wastewater treatment technologies in recent decades for their removal or degradation of recalcitrant pollutants or as pretreatments to convert pollutants into smaller compounds, which can be treated using conventional biological methods. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) is a typical refractory organic pollutant. It has received special attention due to its low biodegradability and the large amount of PVA-containing wastewater discharged from textile and paper mills. This review focuses on PVA removal and PVA wastewater pretreatment by AOPs, which include ozonation, Fenton oxidation, persulfate oxidation, ultrasound cavitation, ionizing radiation, photocatalytic oxidation, wet air oxidation and electrochemical oxidation. The mechanistic degradation pathways of PVA by AOPs are also discussed. In addition, a new classification of AOPs is applied for PVA treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recombinant human androgen receptor yeast assay was applied to investigate the occurrence of antiandrogens as well as the mechanism for their removal during gray wastewater and coking wastewater treatment. The membrane reactor (MBR) system for gray wastewater treatment could remove 88.0% of antiandrogenic activity exerted by weakly polar extracts and 97.3% of that by moderately strong polar extracts, but only 32.5% of that contributed by strong polar extracts. Biodegradation by microorganisms in the MBR contributed to 95.9% of the total removal. After the treatment, the concentration of antiandrogenic activity in the effluent was still 1.05 μg flutamide equivalence (FEQ)/L, 36.2% of which was due to strong polar extracts. In the anaerobic reactor, anoxic reactor, and membrane reactor system for coking wastewater treatment, the antiandrogenic activity of raw coking wastewater was 78.6 mg FEQ/L, and the effluent of the treatment system had only 0.34 mg FEQ/L. The antiandrogenic activity mainly existed in the medium strong polar and strong polar extracts. Biodegradation by microorganisms contributed to at least 89.2% of the total antiandrogenic activity removal in the system. Biodegradation was the main removal mechanism of antiandrogenic activity in both the wastewater treatment systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cell-associated ARGs in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) has been concerned, however, cell-free ARGs in WWTPs was rarely studied. In this study, the abundances of four representative ARGs, sulII, tetC, blaPSE-1, and ermB, in a large municipal WWTP were investigated in both cell-associated and cell-free fractions. Cell-associated ARGs was the dominant ARGs fraction in the raw wastewater. After biological treatment, sludge settling, membrane filtration, and disinfection, cell-associated ARGs were substantially reduced, though the ratios of ARG/16S rRNA gene were increased with disinfection. Cell-free ARGs persisted in the WWTP with a removal of 0.36 log to 2.68 logs, which was much lower than the removal of cell-associated ARGs (3.21 logs to 4.14 logs). Therefore, the abundance ratio of cell-free ARGs to cell-associated ARGs increased from 0.04-1.59% to 2.00-1895.08% along the treatment processes. After 25-day-storage, cell-free ARGs in both biological effluent and disinfection effluent increased by 0.14 log to 1.99 logs and 0.12 log to 1.77 logs respectively, reflecting the persistence and low decay rate of cell-free ARGs in the discharge water. Therefore, cell-free ARGs might be a kind of important but previously neglected pollutant from WWTPs, which added potential risks to the effluent receiving environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, a lab-scale biological anaerobic/anaerobic/anoxic/membrane bioreactor (A³-MBR) was designed to treat wastewater from the ethanol fermentation of food waste, a promising way for the disposal of food waste and reclamation of resources. The 454 pyrosequencing technique was used to investigate the composition of the microbial community in the treatment system. The system yielded a stable effluent concentration of chemical oxygen demand (202 ± 23 mg/L), total nitrogen (62.1 ± 7.1 mg/L), ammonia (0.3 ± 0.13 mg/L) and total phosphorus (8.3 ± 0.9 mg/L), and the reactors played different roles in specific pollutant removal. The exploration of the microbial community in the system revealed that: (1) the microbial diversity of anaerobic reactors A1 and A2, in which organic pollutants were massively degraded, was much higher than that in anoxic A3 and aerobic MBR; (2) although the community composition in each reactor was quite different, bacteria assigned to the classes Clostridia, Bacteroidia, and Synergistia were important and common microorganisms for organic pollutant degradation in the anaerobic units, and bacteria from Alphaproteobacteria and Betaproteobacteria were the dominant microbial population in A3 and MBR; (3) the taxon identification indicated that Arcobacter in the anaerobic reactors and Thauera in the anoxic reactor were two representative genera in the biological process. Our results proved that the biological A³-MBR process is an alternative technique for treating wastewater from food waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]