Mats Tysklind

Umeå University | UMU · Department of Chemistry

Municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) could become valuable contributors to a circular economy by implementing the 3R principles (reduce, reuse, and recycle). While reducing the pollution load of sewage is the primary objective of a WWTP, this process generates several potentially valuable byproducts including treated effluent, biogas, and...

Understanding the mechanisms of pollutant removal in Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) is crucial for controlling effluent quality efficiently. However, the numerous treatment units, operational factors, and the underlying interactions between these units and factors usually obfuscate the comprehensive and precise understanding of the processes....

Buildings are highly energy-consuming and therefore are largely accountable for environmental degradation. Detecting anomalous energy consumption is one of the effective ways to reduce energy consumption. Besides, it can contribute to the safety and robustness of building systems since anomalies in the energy data are usually the reflection of malf...

The abatements of 89 pharmaceuticals in secondary effluent by ozonation and the electro-peroxone (E-peroxone) process were investigated. Based on the results, a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) model was developed to explore relationship between chemical structure of pharmaceuticals and their oxidation rates by ozone. The orthogo...

International shipping in the Arctic region is one of the key contributors to changes in the region due to the generated air emissions from marine fuels combustion, usage of forest-based biofuels as an alternative to conventional fossil fuels in marine shipping seem as an attractive alternative. However, a system analysis perspective is needed to e...

Pesticides are widely used to alleviate pest pressure in agricultural systems, and atrazine is a typical diffuse pollutant and serves a sensitivity index for environmental characteristics. Based on the physicochemical properties of parent substances, degradation products of pesticides may pose a greater threat to aquatic ecosystems than pesticides....

Due to the intrinsic complexity of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) processes, it is always challenging to respond promptly and appropriately to the dynamic process conditions in order to ensure the quality of the effluent, especially when operational cost is a major concern. Machine Learning (ML) methods have therefore been used to model WWTP pro...

Atrazine, a potent herbicide for weeds removal during the growing season, has been widely used in China. It is known to be distributed in aquatic ecosystems with a long half-life, thus presenting a potential risk to species and consumers. This study analyzed the concentrations of degraded atrazine residues in marine organisms (N = 129) including 3...

Active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are vital to human health and welfare, but following therapeutic use, they may pose a potential ecological risk if discharged into the environment. Today´s conventional municipal wastewater treatment plants are not designed to remove APIs specifically, and various techniques, preferably cost-effective and en...

Many micropollutants (MPs) that may adversely affect aquatic life when released into the environment are common in modern societies. The presence of MPs in the environment is frequently connected to release from wastewater treatment plants. Therefore, advanced treatments are needed to remove these MPs. Powdered activated carbon (PAC) efficiently re...

The spatial distributions of atrazine and six types of metabolites in water, suspended particulate sediment (SPS), and surface sediment in an estuary-to-bay system were analyzed. The water distance of metabolites demonstrated that degradation was more active in coastal zone and the Desisopropylatrazine had the shortest half-distance of 1.6 Km from...

Polymeric membranes are important in advanced separation technologies because of their high efficiency and low environmental impact. However, procedures for membrane production are far from sustainable and environmentally friendly. This work presents a life cycle assessment of the environmental impact of fabricating 1000 m² of hollow fiber polymeri...

The oil scarcity and the rise in earth temperature have elevated the interest in lignocellulosic biorefineries. Lignin has high potential to be used in various applications including the production of biomaterials and transportation fuels. Among the different sources of lignin, organosolv lignin has the advantage of being sulphur-free and of low as...

Riverine sediment can reconstruct the history of organic pollution loads and can provide reliable temporal information for pesticide metabolite dynamics in watershed. Sediment core samples were collected from two riverine sections of a cold watershed base in the presence land use change under agricultural development, and the vertical concentration...

Increasing demand for biofuel production and global competition for the use of natural resources are key factors in finding new and environmentally safe routes for methanol production. In the present study, life cycle assessment was used to analyse the potential environmental impact and environmental cost of a novel methanol production process from...

Thousands of halogenated natural products (HNPs) pervade the terrestrial and marine environment. HNPs are generated by biotic and abiotic processes and range in complexity from low molecular mass natural halocarbons (nHCs, mostly halomethanes and haloethanes) to compounds of higher molecular mass which often contain oxygen and/or nitrogen atoms in...

Under the gradients of salinity and redox, the transportation and distribution of dissolved, particulate, and sedimentary arsenic present differences from estuary to bay. Samples of water, suspended particulate sediment (SPS), and sediment from the Jiaozhou Bay were analyzed. The concentrations of arsenic decreased significantly from the estuaries...

The main aim of this study was to explore the effects of climate conditions on the transport and transformation of heavy metals. Sedimentary geochemical analysis and watershed modeling were used to investigate the distinctions between heavy metal pollution under different climate conditions. The results showed that the average concentrations of Cu,...

Renewable energy production from biomass sources and related bio-based economy is gaining more and more attention nowadays. Research related to biomass and bio-based fuels is an important part of the strategic agenda of many countries in Europe and Asia. Furthermore, upscaling investigation in the area is undergoing in many other countries around t...

In order to ensure a sustainable circular bio-economy, bio-based products (BBPs) are the subject of the global research society. Research related to bio-based products is part of the strategic agenda of many countries in Europe, and Asia. Furthermore, strategic frameworks for some bio-based products were developed merging the different environmenta...

In today’s world several major concerns are related to energy and environmental, such as the increasing population, high levels of living standards, and increasing industrialization. These issues require a constant consumption of energy and generate large amounts of wastes. Given the present circumstances and future projections, it is vital to iden...

The current practice of landfilling fly ash generated by waste incineration is non-sustainable, so alternative ways of using this material are needed. Silanization effectively immobilizes the heavy metal contaminants incineration fly ash and enables its circular utilization because silanized fly ash (SFA) has market value as a low-cost filler for p...

A modern way for communicating scientific research and outreaching method was implemented by the system analysis team at the department of chemistry, Umea University. The team developed a webinar series entitled "Sustainable cities and circular bioeconomy", aiming to:-Emphasize importance of systems level thinking in research projects related to su...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.02926.].

Cities in developing nations have to deal with two significant sustainability challenges amidst rampant urbanization. First, consumer-generated food waste is increasing monumentally since open dumping is still followed as a predominant practice, the negative environmental externalities associated with food waste disposal are growing beyond manageab...

This study investigated the abatement of a number of antimicrobials frequently detected in municipal wastewater by conventional ozonation and a recently developed ozone-based advanced oxidation process, the electro-peroxone (E-peroxone) process. A synthetic water and a real secondary wastewater effluent were spiked with fourteen antimicrobials, inc...

Bio4Energy and Green Technology Webinar Series: A Modern Way of Doing Outreach – Dalia Abdelfattah and Krishna Upadhyayula, Bio4Energy System Analysis and Bioeconomy

Marine macroalgae are used worldwide for human consumption, animal feed, cosmetics and agriculture. In addition to beneficial nutrients, macroalgae contain halogenated natural products (HNPs), some of which have toxic properties...

Background The toxicological characterization of sediments is an essential task to monitor the quality of aquatic environments. Many hazardous pollutants may accumulate in sediments and pose a risk to the aquatic community. The present study provides an attempt to integrate a diagnostic whole mixture assessment workflow based on a slightly modified...

Vehicle lightweighting strategies must deliver sustainable returns to customers and society. This work evaluates the sustainable return on investment (SROI) of lightweighted advanced high strength steel (AHSS) and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP)-intensive multimaterial bodies in white (BIWs) for automobiles. The SROI depends on the lightweig...

Halogenated natural products (HNPs) are organic compounds containing bromine, chlorine, iodine, and rarely fluorine. HNPs comprise many classes of compounds, ranging in complexity from halocarbons to higher molecular weight compounds, which often contain oxygen and/or nitrogen atoms in addition to halogens. Many HNPs are biosynthesized by marine ba...

Eight recently isolated microalgal species from Northern Sweden and the culture collection strain Scenedesmus obliquus RISE (UTEX 417) were tested for their ability to remove 19 pharmaceuticals from growth medium upon cultivation in short light path, flat panel photobioreactors. While the growth of one algal species, Chlorella sorokiniana B1-1, was...

Sediment cores can reflect diffuse pollution history due to the accumulation of pollutants over time, therefore, the quantitative relationship between the sedimentation flux of pollutants and diffuse loads can identify the historical change. Sediment cores were collected from two river reaches in a small agricultural watershed (143 km²), and the to...

Levels of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) in herring (Clupea harengus) remain high in several parts of the Baltic Sea, despite declines in PCDD/F emissions since the 1980s. The reasons behind this are not well understood. This study applied a statistical modeling approach where sources of PCDD/Fs that contaminate Balti...

Coastal ecosystems are highly dynamic and can be strongly influenced by climate change, anthropogenic activities (e.g., pollution), and a combination of the two pressures. As a result of climate change, the northern hemisphere is predicted to undergo an increased precipitation regime, leading in turn to higher terrestrial runoff and increased river...

The consumption of pharmaceuticals worldwide coupled with modest removal efficiencies of sewage treatment plants have resulted in the presence of pharmaceuticals in aquatic systems globally. In this study, we investigated the environmental concentrations of a selection of 93 pharmaceuticals in 43 locations in the Baltic Sea and Skagerrak. The Balti...

Several micropollutants show low removal efficiencies in conventional sewage treatment plants, and therefore enter the aquatic environment. To reduce the levels of micropollutants in sewage effluent, and thereby the effects on biota, a number of extra treatment steps are currently being evaluated. Two such techniques are ozonation and adsorption on...

Many Game Changing Innovations (GCIs) from the academic institutions struggle in the Technology Valley of Death (TVD) and they fail to reach commercialization. The academic researchers often lack motivation to seek entrepreneurial opportunities for their GCIs. They are often discouraged after considering the burden required to convince private inve...

Antimicrobial compounds, such as biocides and antibiotics, are widely used in society with significant quantities of these chemicals ending up in sewage treatment plants (STPs). In this study, mass flows and removal efficiency in different treatment steps at three Swedish STPs were evaluated for eleven different biocides and antibiotics. Mass flows...

In seasonal freeze-thaw zones of NE China, the policy-oriented land management has caused successive land use conversions of native woodland, dry cropland and paddy field for food security. Controls of soil property factors on soil dissolved organic carbon (DOC) dynamics might vary with deforestation. This study aimed to test performance of soil pr...

The formation and transportation processes of non-point source (NPS) pollution varied among the studied watersheds in the Northeastern China, so we hypothesized that the driving force behind NPS pollution followed the spatial scale effect. With a watershed outlet sedimentary flux analysis and a distributed NPS pollution loading model, we investigat...

The atmosphere is the major contributor of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) in the Baltic Sea environment. In this study, we investigated the potential of using metals along with PCDD/Fs as markers of important emission sources of PCDD/Fs in air. The air concentrations of PCDD/F congeners (n = 17), other persistent orga...

The environmental performance of Liquefied Biomethane (LBM) and Diesel operated Tractor Trailer (TT) is compared using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study. In this study we consider, raw biogas produced from an anaerobic digestion process of a Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) in Umea, Sweden, which is then upgraded and liquefied to LBM and used...

Better understanding of the occurrence of water phosphorus (P) at the water-sediment interface is vital to clarify P sources of origin in freshwater shallow lake ecosystems. This study focused on water-sediment interface systems and explored implicit indications of lake chemistry on water P based on a case study of Baiyangdian Lake, North China. 20...

Frontal chromatography theory is applied to describe movement of gaseous semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) through a column of polyurethane foam (PUF). Collected mass fractions (FC) are predicted for sample volume/breakthrough volume ratios (τ = VS/VB) up to 6.0 and PUF bed theoretical plate numbers (N) from 2 to 16. The predictions assume con...

Bromoanisoles (BAs) arise from O-methylation of bromophenols, produced by marine algae and invertebrates. BAs undergo sea-air exchange and are transported over the oceans. Here we report 2,4-DiBA and 2,4,6-TriBA in air and deposition on the Swedish west coast (Råö) and the interior of arctic Finland (Pallas). Results are discussed in perspective wi...

Some heavy metals in farmland soil can be transported into the waterbody, affecting the water quality and sediment at the watershed outlet, which can be used to determine the historical loss pattern. Cd is a typical heavy metal leached from farmland that is related to phosphate fertilizers and carries serious environmental risk. The spatial-vertica...

This study focused on the challenges of treating groundwater rich in dissolved organic matter and contains both heavy metals and organic pollutants. Activated carbon, fly ash, lignite, peat, torrefied organic material and zero-valent iron were tested as prospective materials for permeable barriers. Removal of different pollutants was analyzed using...

Pesticide loadings to watersheds increase during agricultural development and may vary in accordance with different crop types and seasons. High pesticide loadings can potentially result in polluted stream water. The objective of this study was to determine the pesticide loadings and concentrations of three typical pesticides (atrazine, oxadiazon,...

Incoming sewage water, treated effluent and digested sludge were collected from 11 Swedish sewage treatment plants (STPs) on 3 different days. Analytical protocols were established for a large number of compounds (47) with antimicrobial properties and the collected samples were then screened for the presence of these selected substances. Liquid chr...

Polyurethane foam (PUF) disk passive samplers were deployed at one inland and two island locations in the Bothnian Bay region of the northern Baltic Sea. Uptake was linear over 81–147 d and a temperature range of −2.6 to 14.2 °C for organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) and current-use pesticides (CUPs) having log KOA ≥9 at ambient temperatures. Partial...

There is concern that heavy metals and biocides contribute to the development of antibiotic resistance via co-selection. Most antifouling paints contain high amounts of such substances, which risks turning painted ship hulls into highly mobile refuges and breeding grounds for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The objectives of this study were to start...

Partition coefficients of gaseous semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs) between polyurethane foam (PUF) and air (KPA) are needed in the estimation of sampling rates for PUF disk passive air samplers. We determined KPA in field experiments by conducting long-term (24–48 h) air sampling to saturate PUF traps and shorter runs (2–4 h) to measure air c...