Determination of enteric virus removal capacities of wastewater treatment plants with varying processes

Date

2024-1-18

Author

Özgür, Cansu

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Viruses are causative agents of a variety of diseases. Among these, Adenovirus, Enterovirus, Hepatitis A virus, Norovirus and Rotavirus are viral agents that cause several diseases, such as; gastroenteritis, Hepatitis A and respiratory illness, respectively. These infections are contagious with high mortality rates. Viruses are mostly transmitted from water. Due to lack of regulations for monitoring these viruses at the discharge point of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), the discharges reach to surface waters causing water-borne transmission. This highlights the importance of WWTPs’ removal efficiencies for improving water safety sanitation and hygiene to minimize spread of infectious viral agents. For this reason, in this study, five different types of WWTPs from Ankara-Turkey including conventional activated sludge (CAS), biological nutrient removal (BNR), sequencing batch reactor (SBR), membrane bioreactor (MBR), and WWTP with coagulation-flocculation and UV disinfection (CoFlUV) units were investigated seasonally for a year, in terms of their viral removal capacities. Seasonal abundances of these virus-specific genes in both influents and effluents of each WWTP were determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The reduction of viral nucleic acids in the effluent wastewater samples compared to the influent wastewater samples was assessed as removal capacity in log10 reduction values (LRVs). The results revealed that, except for DNA virus Adenovirus, the removal of viruses in WWTPs was not affected by the variying processes. Thus, WWTPs discharges need further monitoring to minimize the potential risk of enteric RNA viruses.

Subject Keywords

WWTPs, enteric viruses, adenovirus, enterovirus, norovirus, rotavirus, hepatitis a virus, PCR, qPCR

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/108754

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis