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The PROMISCES project aims to understand the origins, routes and fates of industrial persistent, mobile and potentially toxic pollutants (iPM(T)s), including per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). These substances, also called “forever chemicals”, can be harmful to the environment, human health and circular economy resources.PROMISCES will develop, test and demonstrate, new technologies and innovations to prevent, monitor and remediate iPM(T)s in the soil-sediment-water system under real-life conditions in the field. In this way, PROMISCES will establish more cost-effective, sustainable and ecological technologies for remediating PFAS and iPM(T)s.The project will support the European Green Deal goals and sustainability roadmap of urbanised areas by reducing the environmental impacts on waters (surface and groundwater, urban runoff, drinking waters, wastewater, landfill leachate), soils (contaminated sites, brownfields) and dredged sediments (river, seaports) and of nutrient and material recovery (from sewage sludge to recovered fertilisers, dredged sediments to valorised materials, reclaimed water to crops).To pursue this objective, PROMISCES is centered around seven representative case studies in different European regions linked with challenging chemical pollution, including locations in Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, France, Germany and the Danube river basin between Vienna and Budapest.This Horizon2020-Green Deal project will address key technological challenges while also developing recommendations for implementing relevant EU plans - such as the Zero Pollution Action Plan, the Circular Economy Action Plan and the EU chemicals strategy for sustainability - and EU policy directives, such as the Sewage Sludge Directive and the Water Framework Directive.

Norovirus infections are among the major causes of acute gastroenteritis worldwide. In Germany, norovirus infections are the most frequently reported cause of gastroenteritis, although only laboratory confirmed cases are officially counted. The high infectivity and environmental persistence of norovirus, makes the virus a relevant pathogen for water related infections. In the 2017 guidelines for potable water reuse, the World Health Organization proposes Norovirus as a reference pathogen for viral pathogens for quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA). A challenge for QMRA is, that norovirus data are rarely available over long monitoring periods to assess inter-annual variability of the associated health risk, raising the question about the relevance of this source of variability regarding potential risk management alternatives. Moreover, norovirus infections show high prevalence during winter and early spring and lower incidence during summer. Therefore, our objective is to derive risk scenarios for assessing the potential relevance of the within and between year variability of norovirus concentrations in municipal wastewater for the assessment of health risks of fieldworkers, if treated wastewater is used for irrigation in agriculture. To this end, we use the correlation between norovirus influent concentration and reported epidemiological incidence (R²=0.93), found at a large city in Germany. Risk scenarios are subsequently derived from long-term reported epidemiological data, by applying a Bayesian regression approach. For assessing the practical relevance for wastewater reuse we apply the risk scenarios to different irrigation patterns under various treatment options, namely “status-quo” and “irrigation on demand”. While status-quo refers to an almost all-year irrigation, the latter assumes that irrigation only takes place during the vegetation period from May - September. Our results indicate that the log-difference of infection risks between scenarios may vary between 0.8 and 1.7 log given the same level of pre-treatment. They also indicate that under the same exposure scenario the between-year variability of norovirus infection risk may be > 1log, which makes it a relevant factor to consider in future QMRA studies and studies which aim at evaluating safe water reuse applications. The predictive power and wider use of epidemiological data as a suitable predictor variable should be further validated with paired multi-year data.

Advanced treatment technologies for the removal of pharmaceuticals and other organic micropollutants inWWTPs primarily target the removal of parent compounds. Nevertheless, the removal of metabolites originatingfrom human- or microbial metabolism during biological treatment needs comparable consideration, as some ofthem might be present in high concentrations and contribute to toxicity.This study was conducted to elucidate the removal of human and microbial metabolites of pharmaceuticals as afunction of the specific ozone dose. Ozonation was performed on four sites with two pilot- and two full-scaleplants operated downstream of conventional activated sludge plants. The ozone reactivity of all metabolites(expressed as the ozone dose to remove 90% of the compound/decadic ozone dose) was lower than those oftheir parent compounds. The decadic ozone dose was 1.0, 1.3 and 1.1 mg O3/mg DOC for Epoxy-carbamazepine,Di-OH-carbamazepine and N-Desmethyl tramadol, respectively.20–40% of the remaining metabolites were removed in a polishing sand/BAC-filter (biological activated carbon).Similar removal was observed for Epoxy-carbamazepine, Di-OH-carbamazepine and Hydroxy-diclofenac in aconstructed wetland. However, the sand/anthracite filter had no effect. All four metabolites were removed in aGAC (granulated activated carbon) filter.

In 2015, the town of El Port de la Selva in Spain implemented soil-aquifer treatment (SAT) using tertiary treated wastewater effluents to replenish the local potable aquifer. This study evaluated the initial phase of this indirect potable water reuse system including a characterization of hydraulic conditions in the aquifer and monitoring of microbial contaminants and 151 chemicals of emerging concern (CECs). The combined treatment resulted in very low abundances of indicator bacteria, enteric viruses and phages in the monitoring wells after three days of infiltration and a reduction of antibiotic microbial resistance to background levels of local groundwater. After tertiary treatment, 94 CECs were detected in the infiltration basin of which 15 chemicals exceeded drinking water thresholds or health-based monitoring trigger levels. Although SAT provided an effective barrier for many chemicals, 5 CECs were detected above health-based threshold levels in monitoring wells after short hydraulic retention times. However, additional attenuation is expected due to dilution prior to abstraction via downstream drinking water wells and during granular activated carbon (GAC) filtration, which was recently installed to mitigate residual CECs. Overall, the results demonstrate that indirect potable water reuse can be a reliable option for smaller communities, if related risks from microbial and chemical contaminants are adequately addressed by tertiary treatment and subsequent SAT, providing sufficient hydraulic retention times for pathogen decay and CEC removal.

Environmental science / Water research & technology 7(1), 197-211 (2021). doi:10.1039/D0EW00684J, Published by Royal Soc. of Chemistry, Cambridge

The removal of micropollutants from municipal wastewater is challenged by the number of compounds with diverse physico-chemical properties. Ozonation is increasingly used to remove micropollutants from wastewater. However, ozonation does not necessarily result in complete mineralization of the organic micropollutants but rather transforms them into new compounds which could be persistent or have adverse environmental effects. To explore ozone dose dependency of the formation and successive removal of ozonation products, two pilot-scale and one full-scale ozonation plants were operated subsequent to a conventional activated sludge treatment. The results from these trials indicated that the concentrations of several N-oxides, such as Erythromycin N-oxide, Venlafaxine N-oxide and Tramadol N-oxide, increased up to an ozone dose of 0.56–0.61 mg O3/mg DOC while they decreased at elevated doses of 0.7–1.0 mg O3/mg DOC. Similar results were also obtained for two transformation products of Diclofenac (Diclofenac 2,5-quinone imine and 1-(2,6-dichlorophenyl)indolin-2,3-dione) and one transformation product of Carbamazepine (1-(2-benzoic acid)-(1H,3H)-quinazoline-2,4-dione), where the highest concentrations appeared around 0.27–0.31 mg O3/mg DOC. The formation maximum of a given compound occurred at a specific ozone dose that is characteristic for each compound, but seemed to be independent of the wastewater used for the experiments at the two pilots and the full-scale plant.

Upgrading wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) with advanced technologies is one key strategy to reduce micropollutant emissions. Given the complex chemical composition of wastewater, toxicity removal is an integral parameter to assess the performance of WWTPs. Thus, the goal of this systematic review is to evaluate how effectively ozonation and activated carbon remove in vitro and in vivo toxicity. Out of 2464 publications, we extracted 46 relevant studies conducted at 22 pilot or full-scale WWTPs. We performed a quantitative and qualitative evaluation of in vitro (100 assays) and in vivo data (20 species), respectively. Data is more abundant on ozonation (573 data points) than on an activated carbon treatment (162 data points), and certain in vitro end points (especially estrogenicity) and in vivo models (e.g., daphnids) dominate. The literature shows that while a conventional treatment effectively reduces toxicity, residual effects in the effluents may represent a risk to the receiving ecosystem on the basis of effect-based trigger values. In general, an upgrade to ozonation or activated carbon treatment will significantly increase toxicity removal with similar performance. Nevertheless, ozonation generates toxic transformation products that can be removed by a post-treatment. By assessing the growing body of effect-based studies, we identify sensitive and underrepresented end points and species and provide guidance for future research. This is an open access article published under an ACS AuthorChoice License, which permits copying and redistribution of the article or any adaptations for non-commercial purposes.

Environmental science / Water research & technology 7(1), 232-232 (2021). doi:10.1039/D0EW90056G, Published by Royal Soc. of Chemistry, Cambridge

Bank filtration schemes for the production of drinking water are increasingly affected by constituents such as sulphate and organic micropollutants (OMP) in the source water. Within the European project AquaNES, the combination of bank filtration followed by capillary nanofiltration (capNF) is being demonstrated as a potential solution for these challenges at pilot scale. As the bank filtration process reliably reduces total organic carbon and dissolved organic carbon (DOC), biopolymers, algae and particles, membrane fouling is reduced resulting in long term operational stability of capNF systems. Iron and manganese fouling could be reduced with the possibility of anoxic operation of capNF. With the newly developed membrane module HF-TNF a good retention of sulphate (67&ndash, 71%), selected micropollutants (e.g., EDTA: 84&ndash, 92%) and hardness (41&ndash, 55%) was achieved together with further removal of DOC (82&ndash, 87%). Fouling and scaling could be handled with a good cleaning concept with acid and caustic. With the combination of bank filtration and capNF a possibility for treatment of anoxic well water without further pre-treatment was demonstrated and retention of selected current water pollutants was shown.

A pilot plant with a full scale monolithic ceramic membrane was operated at Ruhleben wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), Berlin Germany, for more than 12 months. Filtration performance according to the applied pre-treatment (dose of ozone and coagulant) were investigated. Trial runs with and without ozone, varying the operational parameters such as flux, coagulant dosage, and filtration time were conducted in order to identify the benefits of pre-ozonation. The reduction of the total fouling rate by ∼70 % when applying a specific ozone dose between 1.0 and 1.4 mg mgDOC–1 highlights the potential of ozonation as pre-treatment step. Using LC-OCD measurements, the effect of ozone on the biopolymer concentration and the DOC fraction was demonstrated.

Ozone process control in secondary effluent used for elimination of trace organic compounds (TrOCs) requires the use of surrogates, such as the relative reduction of UV absorption at 254 nm (ΔUVA254) to adapt the ozone dose to a varying water quality. In the present study, a closed-loop process control based on two online UVA254 measurements was successfully implemented and tested under realistic conditions with ozone doses from 0.2 to 1.05 mg-O3/mg-DOC at a pilot scale ozonation system with subsequent coagulation filtration at a municipal wastewater treatment plant (DOC ∼ 13 mg/L, UVA254 ∼ 27 m−1, and nitrite peaks of up to 1.6 mg-N/L). It could be shown that measuring the UVA254 at the ozonation effluent was superior to the measurement of UVA254 at the filter effluent in terms of response time due to changes in water quality, whereas online measurement at the filter effluent showed a better agreement with laboratory data and a reduced maintenance interval due to less particles. Additional online nitrite measurement is not necessary as the ozone consumption by nitrite directly impacts ΔUVA254.

An increasing number of organic micropollutants (OMP) is detected in anthropogenically influenced water cycles. Source control and effective natural and technical barriers are essential to maintain a high quality of drinking water resources under these circumstances. Based on the literature and our own research this study proposes a limited number of OMP that can serve as indicator substances for the major sources of OMP, such as wastewater treatment plants, agriculture and surface runoff. Furthermore functional indicators are proposed that allow assessment of the proper function of natural and technical barriers in the aquatic environment, namely conventional municipal wastewater treatment, advanced treatment (ozonation, activated carbon), bank filtration and soil aquifer treatment as well as self-purification in surface water. These indicator substances include the artificial sweetener acesulfame, the anti-inflammatory drug ibuprofen, the anticonvulsant carbamazepine, the corrosion inhibitor benzotriazole and the herbicide mecoprop among others. The chemical indicator substances are intended to support comparisons between watersheds and technical and natural processes independent of specific water cycles and to reduce efforts and costs of chemical analyses without losing essential information.

Different technologies for tertiary wastewater treatment are compared in their environmental impacts with life cycle assessment (LCA). Targeting very low phosphorus concentration (50–120 μg/L) and seasonal disinfection of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) secondary effluent, this LCA compares high-rate sedimentation, microsieve, dual media filtration (all with UV disinfection), and polymer ultrafiltration or ceramic microfiltration membranes for upgrading the large WWTP Berlin-Ruhleben. Results of the LCA show that mean effluent quality of membranes is highest, but at the cost of high electricity and chemical demand and associated emissions of greenhouse gases or other air pollutants. In contrast, gravity-driven treatment processes require less electricity and chemicals, but can reach significant removal of phosphorus. In fact, dual media filter or microsieve cause substantially lower specific CO2 emissions per kg P removed from the secondary effluent (180 kg CO2-eq/kg P, including UV) than the membrane schemes (275 kg CO2-eq/kg P).

Pilot scale experiments using an 8 g/h ozonation unit and a 1.4 m 2 slow sand filter have demonstrated that the combination of ozonation and artificial groundwater recharge is suitable for efficient reduction of bulk and trace organics. The biodegradation of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in the slow sand filter was enhanced from 22% without pre-treatment to 34% by pre-ozonation. In addition, realistic surface water concentrations of most investigated trace organic compounds (TrOCs) including carbamazepine, sulfamethoxazole, phenazone and metoprolol were reduced below the limits of quantification. Only a few TrOCs, e.g. primidone and benzotriazole, were not efficiently removed in both treatment steps and could be detected regularly in the filter effluent. For these compounds, enhanced treatment, such as advanced oxidation processes, needs to be considered. Testing for genotoxicity and cytotoxicity did not reveal any systematic adverse effects for human health. The formation of the by-product bromate from bromide was below the limit of the German drinking water directive of 10 μg/L. No removal of bromate was observed in the aerobic slow sand filter. Additional experiments with sand columns showed that operating a preceding bank filtration step to reduce DOC can reduce oxidant demand by approximately 20%.

The impact of a pre-treatment by pre-ozonation (2–10 mg O3/L) and subsequent coagulation (FeCl3: 2–6 mg Fe3+/L) on the performance of a polymeric ultrafiltration membrane was investigated in lab scale. The performance was assessed by monitoring the flux decline during filtration of secondary effluent in Amicon test cells. During the filtration process no free dissolved ozone was in contact with the membrane. It was observed that flux decline is reduced with increasing coagulant concentration as well as with increasing ozone dosage. This effect involves a reduction in the amount of biopolymers measured by size exclusion chromatography (LC-OCD). Moreover, multi-filtration cycles revealed that pre-ozonation leads to a significant increase in irreversible fouling that might be caused by increasing colloidal iron concentrations. Phosphorus in the permeate was successfully reduced to concentrations

1H-benzo-1,2,3-triazole (BTri) and its methylated analogues (tolyltriazole, TTri) are corrosion inhibitors used in many industrial applications, but also in households in dishwashing agents and in deicing fluids at airports and elsewhere. BTri and one of the TTri-isomers (4-TTri) are typical examples of polar and poorly degradable trace pollutants. Benzotriazole elimination in four wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) in Berlin ranged from 20 to 70% for 5-TTRi over 30 to 55% for BTri to insignificant for 4-TTri. WWTP effluent concentrations were in the range of 7-18 microg/L of BTri, 1-5 microg/L of 4-TTri and 0.8-1.2 microg/L of 5-TTri. BTri and 4-TTri proved to be omnipresent in surface waters of the rivers Rhine and Elbe with concentrations increasing from

In urban areas, water often flows along a partially closed water cycle in which treated municipal wastewater is discharged into surface waters which are one source of raw waters used for drinking water supply. A number of organic micro-pollutants (OMP) can be found in different water compartments. In the near future, climatic and demographic changes will probably contribute to an increase of OMP and antibiotic-resistant pathogens in aquatic ecosystems. The occurrence of OMP, possible adverse effects on aquatic organisms and human health and the public perception must be carefully assessed to properly manage and communicate potentially associated risks and to implement appropriate advanced treatment options at the optimum location within the water cycle. Therefore, the interdisciplinary research project ASKURIS focuses on identification and quantification, toxicological assessment and removal of organic micro-pollutants and antibiotic-resistant pathogens in the Berlin water cycle, life cycle-based economic and environmental assessment, public perception and management of potential risks.