Potential of decentralized wastewater treatment for preventing the spread of antibiotic resistance, organic micropollutants, pathogens and viruses (PRESAGE)

New approaches are needed to reduce the emission of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). Some sources, such as hospitals or pharmaceutical industry, contribute strongly to such emissions, which has driven the focus of PRESAGE on innovative decentralized wastewater treatment (WWT).

PRESAGE aims at understanding the integrated behaviour of selected CECs comprising organic micropollutants (OMPs), antibiotic resistant microorganisms/genes (ARMs/ARGs) and pathogens (including bacteria and viruses), during decentralized WWT in different innovative treatment schemes. Separated domestic black water (BW) and grey water (GW), hospital wastewater (WW), and WW from a fermentation based antibiotics production industry will be considered, to assess the influence of operating parameters on the fate and behaviour of the target CECs. The ultimate aim is to find an optimal treatment strategy that provides a final effluent suitable for reuse, complying with safe chemical and biological water quality.

The specific objectives of this proposal address several important knowledge gaps:

To understand which design/operating parameters affect the fate of CECs during biological WWT.
To relate the characteristics of the different sludges, including their physical configuration (floccules, granules, biofilms) with the microbiological composition and metabolic activity in the reactors and with the OMPs and ARMs/ARGs fate.
To understand if the enhanced biodegradation of antibiotics from acclimated microbial consortia, favours the increase or mitigates the prevalence of ARGs in the final effluent.
To assess the impact of advanced disinfection processes on the final emission of ARMs and pathogens.
To determine the effectiveness of decentralized WWT, based on combined biological secondary treatment followed by disinfection, to reduce the emission of CECs and produce effluents suitable for reuse.
To understand what types of CECs determine the final effluent ecotoxicity and which tests are needed to provide environmentally relevant information.

SUMMARY OF THE OVERALL WORKPLAN

Innovative treatment processes will be developed, optimized and validated for the decentralized treatment and disinfection of WW containing CECs. Detailed information on the fate and removal of selected OMPs (WP4) and pathogens (including bacteria and viruses, WP6) will be obtained under different operational conditions. The generation and transfer of ARMs will be studied (WP5) specially in the biological treatment systems, evaluating the influence of biomass concentration, composition and conformation, as well other operational parameters as SRT and temperature. The load of ARMs/ARGs in the effluent will be comprehensively assessed and the impact of OMPs in the prevalence of ARMs/ARGs in the sludge will be examined. The effects of treated WW on aquatic ecosystems will be evaluated for the different treatment schemes by ecotoxicity studies (WP7). The project will be developed at 4 different demosites with the different WW types described above (WP1, 2 and 3), including innovative compact treatment and postreatement technologies.

PARTNERSHIP

- University of Santiago de Compostela (Project Coordinator: Francisco Omil)

- University of Sao Paulo (Brazil). Marcelo Zaiat

- Technical University of Denmark (Denmark). Henrik Rasmus Andersen

- University of Porto (Portugal). Luis Melo

- CNRS/Institut National polytechnique de Toulouse (INP Toulouse). Ecole Nationale Supérieure Agronomique de Toulouse (France). Eric Pinelli

- TU Dresden (Germany). Thomas Ulrich Berendonk

EXPECTED IMPACT

PRESAGE provides new scientific and technological knowledge, as it offers an original research perspective in which environmental and microbiological know-how will be integrated to develop sustainable decentralized treatment processes delivering high quality final effluents, facing important societal, economic and policy challenges. Decentralized treatment of WW containing higher loads of CECs can offer economic and environmental sustainable solutions to approach such challenges. There are still several hypotheses that need a scientific answer to come up with an optimum treatment strategy. A minimum global impact is targeted, preferentially promoting the onsite water reuse, in order to move towards the new circular economy EU strategy. Aware of the importance of actively involving industry, this proposal incorporates Aqualia, Veolia subsidiary, Krueger and Adict Solutions as associated partner. The structure of the project highly facilitates transfer of results as research will be carried out at 4 demosites in collaboration with those partners.