Going beyond conventional wastewater treatment plants within circular bioeconomy concept - a sustainability assessment study.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) have extensive energy processes that undermine their economic and environmental performance. In this context, the integration of wastewater treatment with other biochemical processes such as co-digestion of sludge with organic wastes, and production of value-added products at their downstream processes will shift conventional WWTPs into biorefinery platforms with better sustainability performance. The sustainability of such a biorefinery platform has been investigated herein using an economic and life cycle assessment approach. This WWTP-based biorefinery treats wastewater from Copenhagen municipality, co-digests the source-sorted organic fraction of municipal solid waste and sludge, and upgrades biogas into biomethane using a hydrogen-assisted upgrading method. Apart from bioenergy, this biorefinery also produces microbial protein (MP) using recovered nutrients from WWTP's reject water. The net environmental savings achieved in two damage categories, i.e., -1.07 × 10-2 species.yr/FU in ecosystem quality and -1.68 × 106 USD/FU in resource scarcity damage categories along with high potential windows for the further environmental profile improvements make this biorefinery platform so encouraging. Despite being promising in terms of environmental performance, the high capital expenditure and low gross profit have undermined the economic performance of the proposed biorefinery. Technological improvements, process optimization, and encouraging incentives/subsidies are still needed to make this platform economically feasible.

From wastewater treatment to water resource recovery: Environmental and economic impacts of full-scale implementation.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote resource recovery, many wastewater treatment operators are retrofitting existing plants to implement new technologies for energy, nutrient and carbon recovery. In literature, there is a lack of studies that can unfold the potential environmental and economic impacts of the transition that wastewater utilities are undertaking to transform their treatment plants to water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). When existing, literature studies are mostly based on simulations rather than real plant data and pilot-scale results. This study combines life cycle assessment and economic evaluations to quantify the environmental and economic impacts of retrofitting an existing wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), which already implements energy recovery, into a full-scale WRRF with a series of novel technologies, the majority of which are already implemented full-scale or tested through pilot-scales. We evaluate five technology alternatives against the current performance of the WWTP: real-time N2O control, biological biogas upgrading coupled with power-to-hydrogen, phosphorus recovery, pre-filtration carbon harvest and enhanced nitrogen removal. Our results show that real-time N2O control, biological biogas upgrading and pre-filtration lead to a decrease in climate change and fossil resource depletion impacts. The implementation of the real-time measurement and control of N2O achieved the highest reduction in direct CO2-eq emissions (-35%), with no significant impacts in other environmental categories. Biological biogas upgrading contributed to counterbalancing direct and indirect climate change impacts by substituting natural gas consumption and production. Pre-filtration increased climate change reduction by 13%, while it increased impacts in other categories. Enhanced sidestream nitrogen removal increased climate change impacts by 12%, but decreased marine eutrophication impacts by 14%. The reserve base resource depletion impacts, however, were the highest in the plant configurations implementing biological biogas upgrading coupled with power-to-hydrogen. Environmental improvements generated economic costs for all alternatives except for real-time N2O control. The results expose possible environmental and economic trade-offs and hotspots of the journey that large wastewater treatment plants will undertake in transitioning into resource recovery facilities in the coming years.

Founded: Genetic Reconstruction of Lineage Diversity and Kinship Informs Ex situ Conservation of Cuban Amazon Parrots (Amazona leucocephala).

Captive breeding is a widespread conservation strategy, yet such programs rarely include empirical genetic data for assessing management assumptions and meeting conservation goals. Cuban Amazon parrots (Amazona leucocephala) are considered vulnerable, and multiple on-island captive populations have been established from wild-caught and confiscated individuals of unknown ancestry. Here, we used mitochondrial haplotypic and nuclear genotypic data at 9 microsatellite loci to quantify the extent and distribution of genetic variation within and among captive populations in Zapata Swamp and Managua, Cuba, and to estimate kinship among breeders (n = 88). Using Bayesian clustering analysis, we detected 2 distinct clusters within the Zapata population, one of which was shared with Managua. Individuals from the cluster unique to Zapata possessed mitochondrial haplotypes with affinities to Cuban subspecies (A. l. leucocephala, A. l. palmarum); the shared cluster was similar, but also included haplotypes closely related to the subspecies restricted to Cayman Brac (A. l. hesterna). Overall mean kinship was low within each captive population (-0.026 to -0.012), with 19 and 11 recommended breeding pairs in Zapata and Managua, respectively, ranked according to mean kinship and informed by molecular sexing. Our results highlight the importance of understanding population history within ex situ management programs, while providing genetic information to directly inform Cuban parrot conservation.

The impact of structural integrity and route of administration on the antibody specificity against three cow's milk allergens - a study in Brown Norway rats.

BACKGROUND: Characterisation of the specific antibody response, including the epitope binding pattern, is an essential task for understanding the molecular mechanisms of food allergy. Examination of antibody formation in a controlled environment requires animal models. The purpose of this study was to examine the amount and types of antibodies raised against three cow's milk allergens; ß-lactoglobulin (BLG), α-lactalbumin (ALA) and ß-casein upon oral or intraperitoneal (i.p.) administration. A special focus was given to the relative amount of antibodies raised against linear versus conformational epitopes. METHODS: Specific antibodies were raised in Brown Norway (BN) rats. BN rats were dosed either (1) i.p. with the purified native cow's milk allergens or (2) orally with skimmed milk powder (SMP) alone or together with gluten, without the use of adjuvants. The allergens were denatured by reduction and alkylation, resulting in unfolding of the primary structure and a consequential loss of conformational epitopes. The specific IgG1 and IgE responses were analysed against both the native and denatured form of the three cow's milk allergens, thus allowing examination of the relative amount of linear versus conformational epitopes. RESULTS: The inherent capacity to induce specific IgG1 and IgE antibodies were rather similar upon i.p. administration for the three cow's milk allergens, with BLG = ALA > ß-casein. Larger differences were found between the allergens upon oral administration, with BLG > ALA > ß-casein. Co-administration of SMP and gluten had a great impact on the specific antibody response, resulting in a significant reduced amount of antibodies. Together results indicated that most antibodies were raised against conformational epitopes irrespectively of the administration route, though the relative proportions between linear and conformational epitopes differed remarkably between the allergens. CONCLUSIONS: This study showed that the three-dimensional (3D) structure has a significant impact on the antibodies raised for both systemic and orally administered allergens. A remarkable difference in the antibody binding patterns against linear and conformational epitope was seen between the allergens, indicating that the structural characteristics of proteins may heavily affect the induced antibody response.