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Introduction
The research team of the Microbial biodiversity of the water cycle Group mainly focuses its research activity on the development of techniques for the detection and quantification of pathogenic bacteria and protozoa in natural water, wastewater and water supply. Other research area of our group is monitoring bacterial community dinamics in conventional activated sludge systems and membrane bioreactor using next generation sequencing
Additional affiliations
January 1991 - December 2014
January 1989 - December 2010
Publications
Publications (171)
The textile mill is one of the most water-consuming industries. Wastewater production is very high, and among the main generated pollutants are dyes. In particular, jeans finishing, which is performed all over the world, generates wastewater with indigo dye that has to be eliminated before discharge. This work studies the biological treatment of th...
Controlling drinking water treatment processes is essential to address water contamination and the adaptability of certain pathogenic protozoa. Sometimes, standard treatment methods and chlorine disinfection may prove insufficient in eliminating pathogenic protozoa. However, ultraviolet (UV) radiation has proved to be more effective than chlorine....
The occurrence of microplastics (MPs) in wastewater has been studied in the last years. The high efficiency of their removal from wastewater is linked to their transfer to the sludge. In this work, the effect of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) on aerobic digestion was evaluated and these MPs were monitored, characterizing them by three different t...
Cryptosporidium parvum and Blastocystis hominis are foodborne parasites known for causing diarrhea. They accumulate in mussels grown on contaminated water bodies, due to the discharge of treated sewage from sewage treatment plants (STP). Despite this, some countries like Chile do not include these parasites in the control or monitoring of sewage wa...
In response to growing global interest in organic agriculture, this study delves into the microbial landscape of organically grown raw produce with a focus on food safety. Vegetables that are consumed raw are potential vehicles for the transmission of any type of microorganism capable of causing human disease. Free-living amoebae (FLA) are ubiquito...
In this study, the presence of Acanthamoeba spp., Blastocystis sp., Cryptosporidium spp., Cyclospora cayetanensis, Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia sp., Toxoplasma gondii and Vermamoeba vermiformis was assessed in organic leafy green vegetables (lettuce, spinach, cabbage) and fruits (strawberry), which are usually consumed raw. A total of 110 organic...
The fate and presence of nanoplastics in wastewater treatment systems is a topic of increasing interest. Furthermore, challenges related to their quantification and identification have made it difficult to set up experimental conditions and compare results between studies. In this study, the effect of 100 nm polystyrene nanoplastics on activated sl...
Cryptosporidium sp. and Giardia sp. are parasites that cause diseases in the population. Most of parasite diseases regarding the consumption of drinking water polluted with sewage are caused by Cryptosporidium sp. or Giardia sp. it is because of the incomplete disinfection of the wastewater treatment. Therefore, in this work the removal or inactiva...
Waterborne parasitic protozoa (WPP) infections have a worldwide distribution and are a source for epidemic and endemic human diseases. Although a variety of protozoa are commonly detected in wastewater and cited as causative agents of outbreaks, effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) used for irrigation can contain other pathogenic prot...
4-nonylphenol (4-NP) is one of the most relevant endocrine-disrupting compounds that can be found in wastewaters. In this work, the effect of dosing 1 mg·L⁻¹ of 4-NP to simulated wastewater on the activated sludge process was assessed. For it, two laboratory sequencing batch reactors (SBR) were operated for 94 days, adding 1 mg·L⁻¹ of 4-NP to the w...
In this work, the influence of bisphenol A (BPA) on biological wastewater treatment was studied. For it, two sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) were operated for three months. Both SBRs were fed with synthetic wastewater (SW), adding 1 mg·L⁻¹ of BPA into the feed of reactor SBR-BPA, while the other one operated without BPA as a control reactor (SBR-B...
tAccording to previous research, it has been proved that wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) can retainmore than 90 % of the MPs contained in wastewater. However, a significant fraction of the MPs removedin WWTPs is retained in the sludge floc and this may lead to an environmental issue since biosolids canbe used as fertilizers. The purpose of this...
Las empresas agroalimentarias generan vertidos industriales de características muy particulares. Dentro de este sector, los residuos cárnicos son especialmente contaminantes por su altísima carga contaminante, altos niveles de amonio y sus elevados niveles de consumo de agua, generando diversas problemáticas en la explotación de las estaciones depu...
In this study, 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing was performed to identify bulking filamentous bacteria in an industrial wastewater treatment plant that threats effluents of bioethanol production process from cereal cooking. The presence of Pseudonocardia sp. was confirmed by comparing the 16SrRNA of the most abundantly amplified sequence (OTU; 12....
Técnicas moleculares para el estudio de la ecología microbiana y del sistema de nitrificación en las EDAR Las herramientas de monitorización para el control de los sistemas biológicos en las estaciones depuradoras de aguas residuales (EDAR) deben estar basadas en metodologías precisas, que permitan apuntar hacia la correcta gestión del proceso. En...
Viruses (e.g., noroviruses and hepatitis A and E virus), bacteria (e.g., Salmonella spp. and pathogenic Escherichia
coli) and protozoa (e.g., Cryptosporidium parvum and Giardia intestinalis) are well-known contributors to foodborne
illnesses linked to contaminated fresh produce. As agricultural irrigation increases the total amount of
water used an...
In this study, filamentous bacteria in the activated sludge of a WWTP were investigated
throughout a one-year period using high-throughput short-read (Illumina) and full-length (PacBio) 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. The results showed that a total of 28 filamentous bacteria genera were identified using Illumina sequencing. Also, we found 25 sp...
A complete study about the effects of 3,3',4',5-tetrachlorosalicylanilide (TCS) on organic matter elimination performance, sludge production and on the microbial community of a biological wastewater treatment process has been performed. For this purpose two sequencing batch reactors (SBR) worked in parallel for 43 days with 0.8 mg·L-1 of TCS (SBR-1...
The application of low ozone dosage to minimize the problems caused by filamentous foaming was evaluated in two bioreactors of an urban wastewater treatment plant. Filamentous and nitrifying bacteria, as well as protist and metazoa, were monitored throughout a one-year period by FISH and conventional microscopy to examine the
effects of ozone appli...
Reduction of sludge production is one of the most desired goals in the wastewater treatment plants operation. Alternatives like the
enhancement of metabolism uncoupling or the increase of endogenous respiration by different chemicals have been reported in the bibliography. In this work, two folic acid concentrations (0.8 and 1.6mg L�1) added to a...
Perchlorate (ClO 4⁻ ) has several industrial applications and is frequently detected in environmental matrices at relevant concentrations to human health. Currently, perchlorate-degrading bacteria are promising strategies for bioremediation in polluted sites. The aim of this study was to isolate and characterize halophilic bacteria with the potenti...
Comparison of bacterial communities of activated sludge and membrane biofilm of MBRs treating landfill leachates
J.L. Alonso*, J. Fernández-Navarro*, L. Moreno-Mesonero*,E. Zuriaga-Agustí**, J.A. Mendoza-Roca**, Y. Moreno*, C. Alvarez-Requena***
* Instituto Ingeniería del Agua y Medio Ambiente, Universitat Politècnica de València, Camino de Vera s/...
Human health risk associated to the presence of pathogenic protozoa in reused water
1Amorós Inmaculada, 2Domenech Eva, 1Moreno-Mesonero Laura , 1Moreno Yolanda, 1Alonso Jose L.
1Research Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering, Universitat Politècnica València, Spain
2 Institute of Food Engineering for Development (IUIAD), Universitat Poli...
Advanced metagenomic analysis to elucidate the role of reused water as a dissemination vehicle and possible reservoir of the emergent pathogen Helicobacter.
Due to the increase in the request of regenerated water used for irrigation purposes because of climate change, disinfection processes of secondary effluents are increasingly frequent. Public...
Free-living amoebae (FLA) are ubiquitous protozoa commonly found in water. Inside them, these bacteria survive and are more resistant to harsh environmental conditions that would normally kill them, such as chlorination or presence of biocides. Therefore, FLA act as "Trojan horses" for them. In this work, 5 wastewater samples have been analyzed to...
Tannery wastewaters are difficult to treat biologically due to the high salinity and organic matter concentration. Conventional treatments, like sequential batch reactors (SBR) and membrane bioreactors (MBR), have showed settling problems, in the case of SBR, and ultrafiltration (UF) membrane fouling in the case of MBR, slowing their industrial app...
BACKGROUND
Membrane fouling is the main limiting factor for the application of ultrafiltration (UF) to wastewater treatment as tertiary treatment or in membrane bioreactors. Soluble microbial products (SMP) play the more important role on it. In this work, four sequencing batch reactors were operated in parallel using two different simulated wastew...
Nitrification, the sequential oxidation of ammonia via nitrite to nitrate, is an important process for nitrogen removal from municipal wastewater. This process is catalysed by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB), two different groups of slow-growing microorganisms whose cooperation is needed to achieve complete nit...
Biological nitrification-denitrification is commonly used for nitrogen removal from wastewaters. Nitrification is mainly carried out by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and archaea (AOB and AOA) and nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (NOB). They are a phylogenetically diverse guild with pronounced ecological niche specialization and they differ from each other i...
The presence of Cryptosporidium and Giardia in waste water is a main concern because water reuse for irrigation can jeopardize human health. Spanish Legislation for water reuse does not oblige to analyze the presence of both pathogens Cryptosporidium and Giardia in reused water for irrigation. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to determine...
Understanding waterborne protozoan parasites (WPPs) diversity has important implications in public health. In this study, we evaluated a NGS-based method as a detection approach to identify simultaneously most important WPPs using 18S rRNA high-throughput sequencing. A set of primers to target the V4 18S rRNA region of WPPs such as Cryptosporidium...
Introducción Un biorreactor osmótico de membranas (OMBR) es un proceso similar al biorreactor convencional de membranas (MBR), si bien emplea el proceso de ósmosis directa (OD) en lugar del de ultrafiltración o microfiltración para separar la biomasa del agua depurada. Se trata pues de una potencial aplicación del proceso de OD, proceso que está si...
Sludge production in wastewater treatment plants is nowadays a big concern due to the high produced amounts and their characteristics. Consequently, the study of techniques that reduce the sludge generation in wastewater treatment plants is becoming of great importance. In this work, four laboratory sequencing batch reactors (SBRs), which treated m...
Helicobacter pylori is one of the most concerning emerging waterborne pathogens. It has been suggested that it could survive in water inside free-living amoebae (FLA), but nobody has studied this relationship in the environment yet. Thus, we aimed to detect viable H. pylori cells from inside FLA in water samples. Sixty-nine wastewater and 31 drinki...
Backgrounds: Nowadays, the main challenges in the wastewater treatment sector entail the need to advance in the control and optimization of the processes. In adittion, the restrictions imposed in the discharge of certain pollutants, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, force modifications in the configuration of the treatment plants. Therefore, it is i...
Backgrounds: Studies about the dynamics of filamentous bacterial populations in activated sludge, have often been on bulking and foaming episodes, mainly focused to clarify the taxonomic position, in situ ecophysiology, presence and distribution, as well as the strategies for controlling the populations. However, the studies about the filamentous b...
The ozonation of activated sludge has been used as a technical measure for bulking control in a high number of full-scale wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), despite a lack of precise predictions on the level of reduction in filament growth or the lack of knowledge of impact on microbial community from this technique. Ozone is a strong oxidant reac...
These results were obtained from the research study “Filamentous bacteria community dynamics in WWTPs and their ecological interpretation”. Activated sludge samples were collected from four full-scale WWTPs (six bioreators) located in Spain, weekly from December 2008 to December 2009 (n=138). FISH analysis and conventional microscopy were used to i...
These results were obtained from the research study “Filamentous bacteria community dynamics in WWTPs and their ecological interpretation”. Activated sludge samples were collected from four full-scale WWTPs (six bioreators) located in Spain, weekly from December 2008 to December 2009 (n=138). FISH analysis and conventional microscopy were used to i...
The abundance relative of the filamentous bacteria in activated sludge of the 4 WWTP (6 bioreactors) during the samplig period is showed in figure (3D). Seventeen filamentous morphotypes were identified.
Backgrounds: Municipal waste treatment generates wastewaters that have to be treated before their disposal. Membrane bioreactor systems (MBRs) are used for this type of complex wastewater treatment, because of their capacity of working at high concentrations levels of suspended solids and high cell retention times. However, this produces microbial...
Backgrounds: Landfill leachate is a complex composition containing high levels of ammonia nitrogen. Membrane bioreactor systems (MBRs) are used for this type of complex wastewater treatment, because of their capacity of working at high concentrations levels of suspended solids and high cell retention times. Objectives: In this study, 16S rRNA gene...
Currently, municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are mainly focusing on reduction of biological oxygen demand and on the removal of nutrients. However, there are microorganisms that interfere with the process. In this environment, there is a large diversity of microorganisms that have not been studied in detail and that could...
Excessive growth of filamentous bacteria in activated sludge wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) causes serious operational problems. Therefore, their identification and quantification is essential in the process control. Some filamentous bacteria that belong to the class Gammaproteobacteria are very common and abundant in urban and industrial WWTP...
El crecimiento excesivo de bacterias filamentosas en fangos activos origina problemas de explotación
en las estaciones depuradoras de aguas residuales (EDAR). Por ello, su correcta identificación y
cuantificación es primordial en el control del proceso de las EDAR. Algunas bacterias filamentosas
que pertenecen a la clase Gammaproteobacteria son muy...
Perchlorate is widely used in several industrial applications, and is frequently detected in environmental matrices at concentrations relevant to human health, in particular inhibition of thyroid hormone synthesis. Perchlorate decontamination of environmental using halophyte bacteria are a promising bioremediation strategy. The aim of this work wer...
The filamentous bacteria are generally present in the microbiological communities of activated sludge of domestic wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) and industrial WWTP. The excessive growth of these organisms could cause serious problems, foaming and bulking, for the operation of the WWTP . Specifically the WWTPI of the dairy sector are very probl...
Nowadays cost reduction is a very important issue in wastewater treatment plants. One way, is to minimize the sludge production. Microorganisms break down the organic matter into inorganic compounds through catabolism. Uncoupling metabolism is a method which promote catabolism reactions instead of anabolism ones, where adenosine triphosphate synthe...
Biological treatment of hypersaline wastewaters such as fermentation brine from table olive processing (FTOP), was carried out using four sequential biological reactors (SBRs). These wastewaters were characterized by conductivities higher than 90 mS cm⁻¹ together with COD and total phenols concentration values of more than 15 g L⁻¹ and 1000 mg L⁻¹,...
Análisis microbiológico de una muestra de fangos activos procedente de una EDARI del sector de la producción de biodiesel
In the last years, biological treatment plants for the previously separated organic fraction from municipal solid wastes (OFMSW) have gained importance. In these processes a liquid effluent (liquid fraction from the digestate and leachate from composting piles), which has to be treated previously to its discharge, is produced. In this paper, the ch...
Treated sludge from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is commonly used in agriculture as fertilizers and to amend soils. The most significant health hazard for sewage sludge relates to the wide range of pathogenic microorganisms such as protozoa parasites.The objective of this study was to collect quantitative data on Cryptosporidium oocysts and...
Free-living amoebae (FLA) are ubiquitous microorganisms commonly found in water. They can act as Trojan Horses for some amoeba-resistant bacteria (ARB). Helicobacter pylori is a pathogenic bacteria, suggested to be transmitted through water, which could belong to the ARB group. In this work, a co-culture assay of H. pylori and Acanthamoeba castella...
Biological treatment of hypersaline effluents with high organic matter concentrations is difficult to carry out and it can require a long start-up phase. This is the case of the treatment of fermentation brines from the table olive packaging (FTOP) industries. These effluents are characterized by conductivity values around 90 mS/cm, COD around 1500...
Real-time PCR (qPCR) is a rapid tool to quantify pathogens in the aquatic environment; however, it quantifies all pathogens, including both viable and nonviable. Propidium monoazide (PMA) is a membrane-impairment dye that penetrates only membrane-damaged cells. Once inside the cell, PMA is covalently cross-linked to DNA through light photoactivatio...
Integrated studies relating nitrifying bacteria abundance to physico-chemical and operational variables in wastewater treatment plants are scarce. The knowledge of these relationships under an integrated perspective can provide valuable information to optimize the nitrification process. The present study was carried out in a wastewater treatment pl...
Integrated studies relating nitrifying bacteria abundance to physicochemical and operational variables in wastewater treatment plants are scarce. The knowledge of these relationships under an integrated perspective can provide valuable information to optimize the nitrification process. The present study was carried
out in a wastewater treatment pla...
Excessive growth of filamentous bacteria in activated sludge wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) causes serious operational problems. Therefore, their identification and quantification is essential in the process control. Some filamentous bacteria that belong to the phylum Chloroflexi are very common and abundant
in urban and industrial WWTP, as for...
Excessive growth of filamentous bacteria in activated sludge wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) causes serious operational problems. Therefore, their identification and quantification is essential in the process control. Some filamentous bacteria that belong to the phylum Chloroflexi are very common and abundant in urban and industrial WWTP, as for...
La formación de espumas de origen biológico (foaming) se presenta como uno de los problemas más importantes de separación del fango activo que ocurren con frecuencia en las estaciones depuradoras de aguas residuales (EDAR), disminuyendo la calidad del efluente tratado. Entre las bacterias filamentosas responsables de los episodios de foaming se enc...
Recent studies have suggested that the concentration of filamentous bacteria in the operation of a membrane bioreactor (MBR) should be controlled due to its negative effect on membrane fouling [1]. Other authors [2] found that the elevated presence of filamentous bacteria did not affect the quality of effluent or the permeability of the membranes....
Bacteria that belong to the genus Thiothrix are characterized by distinctive morphological features, such as filamentous growth and accumulation of sulphur granule when incubated in the presence of sulphide or thiosulphate. The Thiothrix morphotypes occur in municipal and industrial WWTPs with and without nutrient removal [1]. Traditionally, the pr...
One of the main operational problems in membranes bioreactors (MBRs) is the membrane fouling. Bacteria present in the biomass of an activated sludge system produce sticky compounds denominated extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) which result from active bacterial secretion, shed from the cell surface or cell lysis. Thus, the activated sludge f...
Domestic sewage should be subjected to purification processes before being discharged to streams or reused for other purposes. One of the most innovative biological treatment processes is the membrane biological reactor (MBR). MBR systems are based on the combination of the activated sludge system and membrane technologies to separate the particula...
The combination of DVC, which increases intracellular rRNA levels of viable bacteria with low metabolic activity, with FISH
method applied to the rapid identification of a specific bacterial sequence has been proposed to determine viable cells in
aquatic environments. We have improve (developed, assessed) a DVC-FISH method to determine viable bacte...
One of the main operational problems in membrane bioreactors (MBRs) is membrane fouling. It can be stated that extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) analysis is of paramount importance for membrane fouling prediction and subsequently to enhance the performance of the MBR process. In this way, the standardization of EPS separation and their anal...
Abstract: The petrochemical sector consumes large amounts of water, either for processing or for cooling. This water is contaminated with petroleum products. The activated sludge system is the main treatment system worldwide. This system consists of an aerobic treatment that oxidizes organic matter to CO2, NH3 and H2O and form new cell biomass. To...