Yingqun Ma

• PhD
• Professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University

Bacteria in rural sewage collection systems have the important influences on operation and maintenance risks, such as sedimentation blockage and harmful gas accumulation, and pollutant pre-treatment ability. It is necessary to analyze and interpret the influence on bacterial communities caused by the location (sewage, biofilms, and deposits), seaso...

Slow solubilization/hydrolysis efficiency has been widely recognized as a limiting factor for volatile fatty acids (VFAs) production from waste activated sludge (WAS) via anaerobic fermentation. This study developed an innovative choline chloride (ChCl)-based approach for WAS treatment. Accordingly, the VFAs yield was increased by 2.5–623.3%, which...

This study developed a high efficiency compound enzyme (Fungal mash) produced in situ from food waste (FW) used for improving hydrolysis and anaerobic digestion (AD) efficiency of FW. Results showed that the soluble COD and methane yield were respectively increased by 67.80% and 16.58% after 24 h in situ enzymatic hydrolysis of food waste by fungal...

Although sewage separate collection is efficient for rural sewage treatment, it may affect sewer biofilms associated with sewer operation and maintenance. To elucidate the variability of bacterial communities in sewer...

Constructed wetland systems, as an engineered ecological system, are being increasingly employed for wastewater treatment. However, owing to the complex incentives for pollutant removal in ecological treatment systems, it is challenging to simulate and optimize the operation of constructed wetlands to advance ecological wastewater treatment systems...

Background The dramatic increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which causes serious global environmental issues and severe climate changes, has become a global problem of concern in recent decades. Currently, native and/or non-native C1-utilizing microbes have been modified to be able to effectively convert C1-gases (biogas, natural gas, and C...

Sewage and construction waste in rural areas are urgently needed to be effectively treated with low cost as the higher environmental demand and lower economic level in rural areas. In this study, unpowered baffle rural sewage reactors filtered with different construction wastes, autoclaved aerated concrete (ALC), composite mortar (CM), and red bric...

This study developed an innovative strategy for wine waste management towards zero-waste discharge with full energy and resource recovery. Waste grape seed, as one of the most typical wine wastes, was first treated by aqueous ethanol, after that the grape seed oil and polyphenols were recycled, and the rest of solid residues were subjected to anaer...

Biological contact oxidation process is attractive and widely used in rural sewage treatment, due to its simplicity and relatively superior pollutants elimination efficiency. However, the effluent total nitrogen (TN) and excess sludge yield during the biological contact oxidation process still need to be intensified to stably satisfy the discharge...

The increasing generation of wastes, e.g. organic solid wastes and industrial and domestic wastewater, posed great environmental pollution and ecological risks. Meanwhile, the scarcity of resources and energy drive the public to seek more efficient and sustainable treatment approaches for pollution elimination and resource recovery. Based on the ac...

Background The dramatic increase in emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) has led to an irreversible effect on the ecosystem, which in turn caused significant harm to human beings and other species. Exploring innovative and effective approaches to neutralizing GHGs is urgently needed. Considering the advancement of synthetic biology and the bioconve...

Soil-heavy metals are potentially harmful to the ecosystem and human health. Quantifying heavy metals sources is conducive to pollution control. In this study, 64 surface-soil samples were collected in Handan city. Cr, Mn, Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb were determined; then, their spatial distribution in the sampling area was drawn by ArcGIS. The pollution...

The stable and efficient operation of the activated sludge sequencing batch reactor (ASSBR) in heavy oil refineries has become an urgent necessity in wastewater biotreatment. Hence, we constructed a green and efficient solid bioaugmentation agent (SBA) to enhance the resistance of the reactor to loading shock. The impact of bioaugmentation on the p...

Antibiotic fermentation residue (AFR) is a form of bioavailable matter, that represents a typical category of hazardous waste associated with drug production in China. The disposal of these residues seriously restricts the sustainable development of the pharmaceutical industry. In this study, the steam explosion and aerobic composting (SEA-CBS) sys...

The global climate change and the demand for renewable energy pose a big challenge in the current solid waste treatment field. Thus, innovative technologies are urgently needed for energy/resource recovery from biomass waste treatment toward environmental and economic sustainability. Additionally, the biorefinery approach of recycling biomass-deriv...

In this study, waste cooking oil (WCO) co-fermentation with food waste by variable pH strategy was developed for microbial lipid production. Results showed that when WCO substitution rate within the range of 1.56–4.68% (corresponding to the WCO content in food waste), lipid production from Rhodosporidium toruloides 2.1389 could be increased by 7.2...

Background As one of the major components of lignocellulosic biomass, lignin has been considered as the most abundant renewable aromatic feedstock in the world. Comparing with thermal or catalytic strategies for lignin degradation, biological conversion is a promising approach featuring with mild conditions and diversity, and has received great att...

In this paper, reactivation of microalgal-bacterial granular sludge (MBGS) stored at −20 °C for 6 months was investigated under respective aeration (R1) and non-aeration (R2) conditions. Results showed that the granular activity could be fully recovered within 21 days. The average removal efficiency of ammonia was higher in R1 (92.78%), while R2 sh...

The disposal and reuse of cephalosporin mycelia dregs (CMDs) pose a great challenge to the biopharma industry, but it acts as the new source of antibiotic resistome, although agriculture intensification remains uncertain. Herein, two common cash crops (maize and soybean) were planted in actual field, and the effects of the application of treated CM...

To compare the effects of low- and high-temperature thermal-alkaline pretreatments (LTTAP, 60±1°C, pH 12.0±0.1, 30 min and HTTAP, 160±1°C, pH 12.0±0.1, 30 min, respectively) on anaerobic digestion (AD) of waste activated sludge, long-term and semi-continuous experiments were conducted in three laboratory continuous stirred tank reactors. The experi...

The microalgal-bacterial granular sludge (MBGS) process is expected to meet the future requirements of municipal wastewater treatment technology for decontamination, energy consumption, carbon emission and resource recovery. However, little research on the performance of the MBGS process in outdoor treatment was reported. This study investigated th...

Background : As one of the major components in lignocellulosic biomass, lignin has been considered as the most abundant renewable aromatic feedstock in the world. Featuring with mild conditions and diversity, biological degradation of lignin is a promising approach comparing with thermal or catalytic ones. Results : In this study, a consortium of w...

Tetracycline has been frequently detected in municipal wastewater due to its extended use for various purposes. This study investigated the influence of tetracycline on non-aerated microalgal-bacterial granular sludge cultivated for municipal wastewater treatment. It was found that ammonia-N removal rate decreased at the tetracycline concentrations...

The amount of sewage sludge generated has been continuously increasing with the expansion of global population and economic activity, which has posed a serious environmental challenge. Thermal‐chemical processes have been considered as an emerging technology for sewage sludge management with the aims for concurrent volume reduction, pathogen destru...

High cost of sewer systems usually restricts the sewage collection in rural areas. Many rural areas take traditional sewer scheme whose private-secondary-main sewer diameter is 110–200-300 mm without hydraulic calculation and increased the total cost of sewers. The rational utilization of small diameter sewers might contribute to sewer cost reducti...

As the health awareness of rural residents improves, rural wastewater treatment is gradually attracting the attention of residents and researchers. However, due to high operation costs and poor maintenance, an effect of the treatment is not guaranteed. This paper reports a bioecological rural wastewater treatment system using wind and solar complem...

Rural sewers are applied widely to collect rural sewage and biofilm characteristics in rural sewers may be different with municipal sewers. The succession of bacteria communities, sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) and methanogenic archaea (MA) need to be studied since rural sewers have a potential risk of sulfide and methane accumulation. In this stu...

So far, the microalgal-bacterial granular sludge process has attracted growing interest as an emerging wastewater treatment technology. Cadmium ion (Cd²⁺) commonly found in wastewater is toxic to microorganisms, thus its effect on microalgal-bacterial granules was investigated in this study. Results showed that Cd²⁺ at the concentration above 1 mg/...

This study developed a novel strategy for enhancing volatile fatty acids production from waste activated sludge by cation-exchange resin assistant anaerobic fermentation. The process condition was optimized by response surface methodology. Considerable sludge disintegration degree (40.9%) and volatile fatty acids yield (4619.6 mg COD/L) were achiev...

This study reported a “treating waste by waste” strategy to dispose waste activated sludge (WAS), i.e. reverse osmosis (RO) brine-enhanced anaerobic fermentation. RO brine was hazardous by-product from seawater desalination process, which contains numerous Na⁺. After 4-day RO brine-enhanced anaerobic fermentation at Na⁺ concentration of 0.33 mol/L,...

Straw as an agricultural byproduct has been recognized as a potential resource. However, open-field straw burning is still the main mean in many regions of the world, which causes the wasting of resource and air pollution. Recently, many technologies have been developed for energy and resource recovery from straw, of which the biological approach h...

This study reported the NaCl-enhanced anaerobic fermentation with cation-exchange resin regeneration waste liquid (CRWL) as alternative NaCl source for waste activated sludge (WAS) disposal and carbon recovery. Through 4-day CRWL-enhanced anaerobic fermentation at Na⁺ concentration of 0.34 mol/L, the Na⁺-caused sludge disintegration triggered numer...

Separate collection of greywater by small diameter gravity sewers (SDGS) has been widely used to achieve greywater treatment and recycling. Bacteria in SDGS biofilms might have the ability to pretreat pollutant and generate sulfide causing impacts on sewer operation. In this study, SDGS reactors coupled with quantitative polymerase chain reactions...

The correlation of the lack in multivalent cations with hydrolase activity and microbial community in anaerobic fermentation of waste activated sludge was investigated in this study. It was demonstrated that considerable solid phase reduction of 41% (7.87 g/L) was achievable through a cation exchange resin-enhanced anaerobic fermentation of 4 days....

Most rural wastewater treatment facilities require aeration equipment to ensure sufficient dissolved oxygen (DO) during processing. Operation and maintenance are costly, and cannot be met in many areas with poor economic levels. This has led to further deterioration of the rural water environment and aroused much attention. This work reports a plug...

Sewers may affect the characteristics and bacterial communities of wastewater, and need be studied as they may impact treatment facilities and recycling operations. In this study, the wastewater characteristics and bacterial communities from the inflow and outflow of two sewers (sewage and greywater) were analyzed. The chemical oxygen demand was si...

Globally increasing concerns have been raised on the high energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in conventional municipal wastewater treatment processes over the past decades. In this study, a self-sustaining synergetic microalgal-bacterial granular sludge process was thus developed to address these challenges. The results showed that the...

This study reported a novel pretreatment approach with combination of alkaline protease (AP) and pH 10 for enhancing short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) production from waste activated sludge (WAS). Through the AP-based pretreatment, WAS flocs were disintegrated with cell lysis, leading to release of biodegradable organic matters. At the external AP do...

This study developed an economical approach for enhancing short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) production from waste activated sludge (WAS) by NaCl assistant anaerobic fermentation. With NaCl addition at 20 g/L, sludge disintegration with extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) disruption and cell lysis were induced owing to the attack of osmotic pressu...

Small diameter gravity sewers (SDGS) have been applied in rural areas to collect sewage or greywater. Flow conditions in rural SDGS are variable and their influences on bacteria in sewer biofilms are still not clear. To investigate the effect of flow conditions on sewage and greywater SDGS biofilms, six sewage SDGS and six greywater SDGS were opera...

Recently, the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) from waste activated sludge (WAS) has received increasing attention. Although several pretreatment methods had been investigated, sludge hydrolysis through depletion of multivalent cations has rarely been reported. In this work, cation exchange resin (CER) was used for enhancing WAS hydrol...

This study reported an efficient and green approach towards facilitating hydrolysis of waste activated sludge (WAS) using cation exchange resin (CER) as a recyclable additive. Through CER-mediated removal of multivalent cations, WAS flocs were disintegrated into small particles with extracellular polymeric substance (EPS) solubilization. At CER dos...

Small diameter gravity sewers (SDGS) are extensively used to collect rural sewage as they are low in cost and quick to construct. However, the characteristics of biofilms in rural SDGS are still not clear. In this study, biofilms characteristics of aerobic rural SDGS were investigated using simulations in a lab under different flow conditions and s...

An innovative co-locating concept base on synergistic co-digestion of sewage sludge (SS) and food waste (FW) was proposed and verified in this study. The results showed that a biggest synergistic effect happened in the co-digestion of SS and FW in volatile solid (VS) mixing ratio of 1:1 with the highest methane yield of 415.3 mL/g VS. It is estimat...

The world is facing an increasing energy crisis due to the crucial situation of growing energy requirements and rapid consumption of fossil fuels (Petroleum, 2018). More than 2.8 billion (2.8 × 109) people worldwide still directly use solid fuels such as wood, coal and charcoal as energy sources instead of electricity (Drechsel et al., 2015), and e...

Small diameter gravity sewers (SDGSs) have been applied globally and provide a sewage recycling method whereby collected greywater can be directly reused as reclaimed irrigation water, which can be particularly useful for low-income rural areas. However, the fungi characteristics of SDGS biofilms remain unclear, especially with respect to the abund...

Ferrous salts have been widely used to enhance phosphorus removal in full-scale wastewater treatment plants, with an average dosage of 0.24-0.35 mM. However, such high dosage inevitably caused serious concerns on operation, potential biological toxicity and excessive sludge production. Thus, this study investigated the effect of micro-dosing of fer...

With rapid urbanization, sewer systems are extensively being constructed for the collection and transportation of sewage to minimize the severe environmental and health issues, especially relating to the spread diseases. The existence of abundant biofilms on the inner walls of sewers could lead to potential risks such as sewer explosions, poisonous...

Food waste (FW) management is a global conundrum because of the rapid population growth and growing economic activity. Currently, incineration and landfill are still the main means for FW management, while their environmental sustainability and economic viability have been in question. Recently, the biological processes including anaerobic digestio...

A novel variable pH control operation strategy was developed for maximizing energy and resource recovery from food waste by integrating the ultra-fast hydrolysis and lipid fermentation. Food waste after fast hydrolyzed by homemade hydrolytic enzymes, the separated solids can be directly applied as biofertilizer, while the liquor was used for microb...

The hydrolysis as an essential step in anaerobic digestion has been commonly evaluated according to the extent of soluble chemical oxygen demand (SCOD) released from biosolids. However, little information is currently available for the effect of chemical compositions of SCOD on anaerobic digestion. This study showed that the non-biodegradable, reca...

4-Chlorophenol (4-CP) oxidation plays an essential role in the detoxification of 4-CP. However, oxidative regulation of 4-CP at the genetic and biochemical levels has not yet been studied. To explore the regulation mechanism of 4-CP oxidation, a novel gene cluster, cphRA2A1, involved in biodegradation of 4-CP was identified and cloned from Rhodococ...

Although biodiesel has been extensively explored as an important renewable energy source, the raw materials-associated cost poses a serious challenge on its large-scale commercial production. The first and second generations of biodiesel are mainly produced from usable raw materials, e.g. edible oils, crops etc. Such a situation inevitably imposes...

Microalga-derived biodiesel plays a crucial role in the sustainable development of biodiesel in recent years. Literature related to microalga-derived biodiesel had an increasing trend with the expanding research outputs. Based on the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-Expanded) of the Web of Science, a bibliometric analysis was conducted to chara...

A food waste resourceful process was developed by integrating the ultra-fast hydrolysis and microbial fuel cells (MFCs) for energy and resource recovery. Food waste was first ultra-fast hydrolyzed by fungal mash rich in hydrolytic enzymes in-situ produced from food waste. After which, the separated solids were readily converted to biofertilizer, wh...

In this study, a biomembrane surface fermentation was used to produce red pigments of Penicillium novae-zelandiae, and the significant improvement in pigment production by the addition of 0.4 g/L of tyrosine demonstrated that the red pigments probably contained betalain. Therefore, one red pigment was purified, and identified as 2-decarboxybetanin...

In this study, an integrated engineering system was developed for bioenergy production from food waste pre-treated with a cost-effective and highly active enzyme mixture, namely fungal mash which was also in-situ produced from food waste. Under the optimized conditions, 141.5 g/L of glucose was obtained with 67.5% of total solid reduction after hyd...

In this study, biodiesel production from waste cooking oil using FeCl3-modified resin as heterogeneous catalyst were investigated. Under optimised conditions of methanol/oil molar ratio of 10:1, catalyst content of 8%, reaction time of 90 °C and reaction time of 120 min, a high transesterification rate of about 92% was achieved. A comprehensive kin...

A bibliometric analysis based on the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED) from the Web of Science was carried out to provide insights into research activities and tendencies of the global biodiesel from 1991 to 2015. The document type and language, characteristics of publication outputs, Web of Science categories, journals, countries, ins...

Waste organic solvents have been classified as hazardous waste in many countries because of their toxicity, high volatility and Ignitability. Waste organic solvents are produced in a lot of industries including of the electronics industry. In this industry, organic solvents are used as cleaning agent and developer, which would generate a lot of was...

In this study, inexpensive waste food oil was used as raw material, the p-toluenesulfonic acid as catalyst, the methanol/ethanol as a transesterification agent to prepare biodiesel was reported. The results indicated that the mixed methanol/ethanol contributed to improving the biodiesel performance. Specifically, when mole percentage of ethanol in...

Resource technology for food waste has become the research hot recently. To perform ethanol fermentation from food waste could realize energy recovery and pollution prevention. This study investigated the effects of two kinds of immobilization carriers, loofa sponge and fiber ball on ethanol fermentation from food waste. The seven runs of fermentat...

According to the directory of hazardous waste, Waste methanol belongs to the hazardous waste. Production of methanol will produce ethers, ketones and other impurities. During the distillation for waste methanol, high concentrations of distillation waste will be produced. In this paper, waste methanol recovery process in a southern chemical plant wa...