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Thesis (M.S.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-138). / xi, 138 leaves, bound ill. (some col.) 29 cm

Biological wastewater treatment is typically aerobic and an energy intensive process, mainly due to the required aeration. Alternative sustainable processes are sought, such as Microbial fuel cells (MFC) where electrogenic bacteria can degrade organic matter present in the waste stream while simultaneously generating electricity. MFCs represent an emerging technology which may deliver the capability to reduce the pollution potential of low strength wastewaters (< 1500 mg COD l-1) while generating electricity which could be used to self-power the process. Waste streams high in volatile fatty acids (VFAs) with high conductivity are particularly preferred substrate streams. These may include the effluent from two stage bio-hydrogen and bio-methane systems, which in this study were treated in a four-module tubular MFC (V=1 l) to reduce the chemical oxygen demand (COD) and recover further energy from the substrate. It was shown that the power increased with increasing organic loading rate (0.036-0.572 g sCOD l-1 d-1), but COD removal efficiency decreased. The Coulombic Efficiency (CE) was found to decrease significantly at OLR ˃ 0.6 g sCOD l-1 d-1 and the energy recovery was 92.95 J l-1 (OLR=0.572 g sCOD l-1 d-1). Also, wash-down waters from a chilled food producing company were treated in the same tubular MFC, reducing the soluble COD content by 84.8%. The low power (≈ 30 W m-3) and cell potential (≈ 0.5 V) makes it necessary to investigate methods such as external capacitors, DC/DC converters or serial and parallel connection to improve the power quality. In this thesis, the use of the intrinsic capacitance was tested by switched mode, open and closed circuit (OC/CC) operation of a 2-module tubular MFC with high surface area carbon veil anode. The charge accumulated during OC and released when switched to CC was dependent on the external resistor (R = 100-3 kΩ) and duty cycle. Short period OC/CC switching further increased potential due to the pseudo-capacitance of the reactor, but only at the expense of energy efficiency, compared to continuous operation (CC) under constant load. Another approach to enhance the practical implementation of MFCs is integration with other processes such as reverse electrodialysis to increase MFC’s cell potential or e.g. desalination. In this study a MFC was integrated with supported liquid membrane technology (SLM) for the first time, for the removal of metal ions of wastewater. A three chamber reactor, with a common cathode/feed phase containing 400 mg Zn2+ l-1, enabled V the simultaneous treatment of organic- and heavy metal containing wastewaters. The MFC/SLM combination produces a synergistic effect which enhances the power performance of the MFC significantly; 0.233 mW compared to 0.094 mW in the control. It is shown that the 165±7 mV difference between the MFC/SLM system and the MFC control is partially attributable to the lower cathode pH in the integrated system experiment, the consequent lower activation overpotential and higher oxygen reduction potential. The system demonstrates that within 72 h, 93±4% of the zinc ions are removed from the feed phase. A further study, with continuously operated cathode/feed chamber (100 mg Zn2+ l-1), showed that an enhanced effect on increasing cell potential was possible and could also be maintained in continuous operation.

Water is the most abundant substance in nature and vital for life activities. The major water sources for use are surface water bodies such as rivers and lakes, and underground aquifers and pore spaces down the water table (Ring, 2003). Water derived from these sources is not necessarily pure since it contains dissolved inorganic and organic substances, living organisms (viruses, bacteria, etc). For these reasons, water intended for domestic uses should be free from toxic substances and microorganisms that are of health significance (WHO, 2005). The availability and quality of water always have played an important role in determining the quality of life. Water quality is closely linked to water use and to the state of economic development (Chennakrishnan et al., 2008). Ground and surface waters can be contaminated by several sources. In urban areas, the careless disposal of industrial effluents and other wastes may contribute greatly to the poor quality of water (Mathuthu et al., 1997). In most developing countries, most areas are located on the watersheds which are the end points of effluents discharged from various industries (Oberholster and Ashton, 2008). South Africa, as a developing country, is experiencing rapid demographic changes due to urbanization, industrialization and population growth. The country has also been identified as being water-scarce, which can lead to a challenge of meeting the increasing water demand due to industrialization and urbanization. Such population growth increase may result in an increase in wastewater output, especially around urban areas.

Thesis (DTech (Electrical Engineering))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2009 / The problem for effective and optimal control of wastewater treabnent plants is very important recently because of the increased requirements to the qualitY of the effluent The activated sludge process is a type of wastewater process characterized with complex dynamics and because of this proper control design and implementation strategies are necessary and important for its operation. Since the early seventies, when a major leap forward was made by the widespread introduction of dissolved oxygen control, little progress has been made. The most critical phase in the solution of any control problem is the modelling stage. The primary building block of any modem control exercise is to construct and identify a model for the system to be controlled. The existing full Activated Sludge Model 1 (ASM1) and especially University of Cape Town (UCT) models of the biological processes in the activated sludge process, called in the thesis biological models, are highly complex because they are characterised with a lot of variables that are difficult to be measured on-line, complex dependencies and nonlinear interconnections between the biological variables, many kinetic parameters that are difficult to be determined, . different time scales for the process dynamics. The project considers reduction of the impact of the complexity of the process model over the methods for control design and proposes a solution to the above difficulties by development of a reduced model with small number of variables, but still with the same characteristics as the original full model for the purposes of real time.

The potential of using mushroom polyphenol oxidase (EC 1.14.18.1) as a biocatalyst for the biotransformation of phenols to produce catechols in an aqueous medium was investigated. Polyphenol oxidase is characterised by two distinct reactions i.e., the ortho-hydroxylation of phenols to catechols (cresolase activity) and the subsequent oxidation of catechols to orthoquinones (catecholase activity). In order to facilitate the development of a process to produce catechols, the accumulation of catechol as a true intermediate product released in the reaction system needed to be investigated, as its release had been disputed due to the oxidation of catechols to o-quinones. Using LC-MS, catechol products were successfully identified as true intermediate products formed during biocatalytic reactions in water.