IRANIAN JOURNAL OF HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENT
Year:2010 | Volume:3 | Issue:2 (8)|Papers Count:12

Backgrounds and Objectives: Oil pollution can be generated as a result of spillage, leakage, discharge, exploration, production, refining, transport and storage of crude oil and fuels in the environment. Consequently, many researchers have developed and studied the chemical, physical and biological methods to degrade crude oil. Among them, the biological treatments are the most interesting as they are simple and economical methods. The aim of this study was to determine biokinetic coefficients of crude oil degradation by pseudomonas aerogenusa. This microorganism was isolated in our previous work.Materials and Methods: In this study the bio-kinetic coefficients of crude oil biodegradation were evaluated. Pseudomonas aerogenusa bacteria which had been isolated from the soil sample taken from a gas station in our previous work were used in this study. This microorganism was cultured in the liquid medium containing crude oil as sole carbon source. Finally with determining the amount of microorganisms and crude oil concentration during biodegradation process, the bio-kinetic coefficients based on modified Monod equation were calculated.Results: bio-kinetic coefficients obtained from laboratory studies are vital factors in industrial applications. As a result, the bio-kinetic study was performed to find bio-kinetic coefficients for biodegradation of crude oil using the isolated bacteria. The results showed that, Y, k and were equal 0.107, 0.882, 9.39 and 169.3 respectively.Conclusion: Our results showed that pseudomonas aerogenusa is usable for treatment of oily wastewaters in the full scale facility. Results of this study indicated bio kinetics confections.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Untreated leachate is discharging into the environment in the many countries of worldwide. Leachate treatment methods have not been unified so far due to variable composition of leachate. Moreover, the uncontrolled management of leachate, cause many environmental dissociates. The aims of this study apply the Fenton process to decrease the pollutants of Kerman leachate.Materials and Methods: Raw leachate was obtained from compactor vehicles used for the collection of Kerman city solid waste, before final disposal. In order to removal of biodegradable organic compounds, a rector was built based on characteristics of landfill Kerman city and raw leachate underwent anaerobic treatment in this pilot. In the next stage, treated leachate in the pilot, was affected by Fenton process. The optimized parameters in Fenton process including pH, reaction time and dosage of H2O2 and Fe2+ were also studied.Results: The results showed that TSS, BOD5 and COD decrease to 62*, 96* and 89*, respectively, after 60 days treatment in the pilot. BOD5/COD ratio also decreased from 0.6 to 0.2 in anaerobic treated leachate. In optimum condition (pH=3, reaction time=75 min, Fe2+=1400 mg/L and H2O2 = 2500 mg/L) maximum COD removal was 78 * by Fenton process. BOD5/COD ratio increased from 0.2 to 0.51 which showed an increase in biodegradability of leachate as a result of Fenton process.Conclusion: anaerobic biologically treatment followed by Fenton processes could be assumed as an efficient process that could improved the leachate quality. Biological treatment to reduce leachate pollution alone was not enough. The most important Fenton process advantage is reduction of refractory and toxic leachate compounds and increasing leachate.s biodegradability.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Powdered Activated$ carbon is known as a suitable absorbent for organic materials. The aim of this research is evaluation of Powdered Activated-Carbon (PAC) efficiency in removal of Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) in water treatment in Isfahan.Materials and Methods: The increase of PAC for DOC reduction has done in three paths in the Isfahan water treatment plant (WTP). These paths including: 1) Intake up to entrance of WTP 2) Intake to exit of WTP 3) Between entrance and exit of waterworks. The paths were simulated by the Jar test system. Then DOC and UV254 absorption were analyzed and SUVA parameter for samples and activated-carbon adsorption isotherm was calculated.Results: The injected PAC doses of 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 mg/l caused decreasing in DOC and UV254 absorption in every sample in all paths. The average of this decrease, from intake to WTP.s exit (second path) was the greatest 69.8±3.9%and the common WTP process had capability of removing 35% of DOC. The first path also showed that PAC can reduce 33±2% DOC of raw water by itself. Activated-carbon absorption results were adhered from Freundlich adsorption isotherm.Conclusion: In the third path there was less DOC removal efficiency than excepted when Activated- Carbon injected in rapid mixed basin with coagulant. Powdered activated carbon porosity reduction due to effect of coagulant can be the reason for this issue. Also according to different paths; the point of intake is more suitable for powdered activated carbon addition.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Nitrate is a water contaminant that can cause health problems in human and animals, in addition to eutrophication of the water body. So, Nitrate-contaminated water may be treated by treatment systems. In this study, hydrogenotrophic denitrification using hydrogen produced by Fe0 as an electron donor to nitrate removal was evaluated to assess the feasibility of employing Fe0 in the biological nitrate treatment.Materials and Methods: Batch experiments were conducted using 250 ml amber bottles at 20-35oC under anoxic conditions. The nitrate concentration in each reactor was 20 mg N/L and triplicate samples were prepared for the following treatment: Fe0 plus cells, Fe0 only, and control. The effect of Fe+2 and temperature on nitrate reduction was evaluated.Results: 97 percent of Nitrate was reduced within 2 day in a Fe0-cell reactor, while only 30% of the nitrate was abiotically reduced over 2 day at 30oC. Fe+2, which are produced during anaerobic iron corrosion in the Fe0-cell system, might act as an electron donor for nitrate. Abiotic reduction and microbial reduction of nitrate was significantly affected by temperature conditions. The reduction rate decreased as the temperature deceased.Conclusion: This study demonstrated the potential applicability of employing Fe0 as a source of electrons for biological nitrate reduction. Use of Fe0 for microbial nitrate reduction can obviate the disadvantages associated with traditional biological denitrification that relies on the use of organic substrates or explosive hydrogen gas.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Carcinogenic and mutagenic potential of some azo dyes as a category of common dyes in different types of industries has been reported. The degradation of one commercially available dyestuff [C.I. Reactive Red 198 (RR 198)] by means of ultraviolet radiation (UV), ultrasonic irradiation (US), UV/H2O2 and US/H2O2 processes was investigated.Materials and Methods: Photolysis process was accomplished in a laboratory-scale batch photoreactor equipped with an 55W immersed-type low-pressure mercury vapour lamp (UVC) and sonication in a sonoreactor with low frequency (42 kHz) plate type transducer at 170W of acoustic power with emphasis on the effect of various parameters on decolouration and degradation efficiency.Results: Initial results showed that, color removal efficiencies by US and US/H2O2 processes were negligible. Almost complete disappearance of RR 198 (20 mg/L) in UV/H2O2 process was possible to achieve after 10 min of irradiation. It is found that lower pH and lower concentration of dye favor the dye degradation. Hence any increase in initial dye concentration results in decreased decolouration rates. Also, the experimental results indicated that the kinetics of sono-oxidation and photo-oxidation processes fit well by pseudo-first order kinetics and first order reaction kinetics, respectively.Conclusion: It is concluded that UV/H2O2 reaction was more effective than other reactions in bleaching and the reaction rate was sensitive to the operational parameters and increased with increasing H2O2 concentration up to 15 mM.

Background and Objectives: Dyes are organic compounds with complex structures, which due to toxicity, carcinogenicity and nonbiodegredabity, this type of pollutants is one of the most important pollutants of the environment. The goal of this research was to study the feasibility of the application of solar irradiation in presence of potassium persulfate (K2S2O8) for the removal of Reactive blue19 (RB19) from synthetic wastewater.Materials and Methods: This research was carried out in laboratory scale with using of 200ml volume of batchphotoreactor. The effects of operating parameters such as concentration of K2S2O8, pH, photoexposure time and preliminary concentrations of dye on decolorization have been evaluated. Different concentrations of pollutant in wastewater were prepared by solution of various masses of RB19 on tap water. The reactors were exposed with natural solar irradiation as aUVA source from11 amto 14 pm. Themaximum absorbtion wave length of this dye (max) was determined by spectrophotometer (Unico, 2100). The measurement of dye concentrations was determined with using of standard curve and its best line equation.Results: Analysis of absorbtion spectra showed that the max of RB19 is 592 nm. The average intensity of the UVA irradiated from solar system was 54.6 mW/Cm2. The results of decolorization process showed that 38.2%of this dye can be removed within 3 hr in the presence of potassium persulfate and decreasing of pH leads to the elevation of dye removal efficiency. Based on these findings, the efficiency of dye removal with 3h photoexposure time and pH ranges of 4,6 and 8 were found to be 98.2 88.5 and 78.5%, respectively. Also, the results showed that increasing of K2S2O8 dosage leads to elevation of dye removal efficiency in 3h photoexposure time and K2S2O8 dosages within 1-5mmol/L, with the removal efficiency of 75,86,92,95 and 98.5%, respectively. Analysis of data indicates that the kinetic of the removal of RB19 with this process is a first order reaction which its rate constant is 0.01min-1.Conclusion: Due to the operation problems presented in heterogeneous photocatalitical processes such as catalysts separation and high costs of operation and maintenance of these processes caused by manmade sources of irradiations; homogeneous photocatalitical process with using of potassium persulfate associated with natural solar irradiation can be used as a suitable process for the removal of dyes from textile industries wastewaters.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Cyanide is a species of high toxicity that found mostly in industrial effluents such as electroplating, metal mining, metallurgy and metal cleaning processes. Intrance of it to Existence enviroment contains very health hazardous. Purpose of this study, efficiency compares of both sonochemical and photosonochemical technologies for cyanide removal from aqueous solutions.Materials and Methods: in this study, it has been used from a productive set of 500w power ultresound waves in of two frequencies 35 kHz and 130 kHz and a 125 W low pressure mercury lamp. Experiments were performed at initial cyanide concentrations varying from 2.5 to 75 mg/L. in this study, The effects of parameters such as pH, time and initial cyanide concentration on the sonochemical and photosonic degradation have been studied.Results: The results of the study showed that the maximom removal efficiency of cyanide had been achieved sonochemical technology was 71% while it was 74% by photosonic at frequency of 130 kHz, at time of 90 min, pH of 11 and initial cyanide concentration of 2.5 mg/l.Conclusion: The results of the study showed that efficiency of photosonic process is more than for sonochemical cyanide removal from aqueous solutions. Also efficiency of cyanide removal has direct relationship with pH, frequeny and time, and it has reverse relationship with cyanide concentration for both processes.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Formaldehyde and phenol are key precursors in the industrial manufacture of resins. Toxicity of these compounds prevents function of microbial populations, so they affect the biological treatments. The aim of this study was investigation of TOC removal from phenol-formaldehyde resin manufacturing wastewater by electrocoagulation using Al- electrodes.Materials and Methods: This study is the laboratory scale experiment was conducted as a pilot. Wastewater sample was adjusted in the desired pH, electrical conductivity and current density, then it was placed in to the reactor contains four electrodes in aluminum. The electrodes were connected to a DC power supply (0-40V, 0-3A). Samples were collected for TOC determination in the middle of cell at regular time intervals. Collected samples were analyzed using TOC analyzer.Results: The results indicated that the optimum conditions for the removal of TOC were current density 75 A/m2, solution pH 4 and Conductivity 3 mS/cm. In this condition energy consumption was found 22.5 kWh m-3 after 60 min reaction.Conclusion: This study shows that electrocoagulation of wastewater from phenol-formaldehyde resin manufacturing can be used as a pretreatment process.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Vegetables are one of the most important components of daily food. Contamination of vegetables with heavy metals might ends to accumulate in the body, there for in this study the level of lead, chromium, cadmium, arsenic and zinc in cultural vegetables of shahroud suburb were measured in 1387.Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional descriptive study, 150 vegetable samples through 3 months, 50 for each month, were randomly harvested. Atomic absorption instrument was used to determine the amount of mentioned heavy metals after sample preparation, SPSS whit 0.05 was used for statistically data analyzing.Results: For vegetables the average value of Pb, Cr and Cd in different vegetables were different from each other and P value was less than<0.001. There are no significant amounts of Arsenic concentration. The value of these metals with 95% acceptable level was in the range of satisfaction. Arsenic didn’t have that much of error of its contamination.Conclusion: Except Zn and As other metals like Cr, Cd and Pb were above the standard zone by FAO&WHO. The wastewaters of urban and industrial facilities are the main reason for this problem. The best suggestion is using pure water for this purpose.

Backgrounds and Objectives: True cholera with typical clinical features nearly always occurs by serologic groups O1 and O139 but the non-O1 group can produce a disease with same clinical characteristic sporadically. According to the important of climate and environmental conditions in the distribution and abundance of Vibrio cholera, in this study, the distribution of the serologic group was evaluated in different parts of Qom city with relation to the affected patients.Materials and Methods: In this study 5220 environmental specimens were taken from 12 parts of Qom city and during different seasons of the year 1325, 60 clinical specimens were taken from the patients and all were evaluated for Vibrio cholera with standard methods. The study was of Descriptive and cross sectional and the results were analyzed with statistical soft ware (Epi-info).Results: The most abundance of Nag strains were related to Emamzadeh Ebrahim and Sheikhabad parts and Shahed Street from Khak faraj and Niroogah area and the least abundance were related to Salariyeh area. The abundance distribution of Nag strain, 7 different specimens was most in hogwash, sewerage and vegetables and least in pipe water which reveal a significant difference (P<0.05) according to statistical goodness of fit test. The frequency distribution of the patients in each part of area 4 with relevance to sex revealed that the most contamination percentage was attributed to Emamzadeh Ebrahim and Sheikhabad and Shahed from Niroogah area and no positive specimen was taken from Haftado-do-tan and Shahrdary areas.Conclusion: According to high occurrence of the disease in same areas, and results from other researchers based on increased frequency of non-O1 strains in the environment during the epidemic, so can release a connection between Vibrio cholera O1 strains and non-O1 strains to conclude. On the other hand, none of the clinical and environmental samples, Vibrio cholera O1 was isolated, so probably human carriers in Qom, not the main factor is the emergence of this disease.

Backgrounds and Objectives: There is a considerable notice in the use of noise barriers in recent years. Noise barriers as a control noise solution can increase the insertion loss to protect receivers. This paper presents the results of an investigation about the acoustic efficiency of primitive root sequence diffuser (PRD) on environmental single T-shape barrier.Materials and Methods: A 2D boundary element method (BEM) is used to predict the insertion loss of the tested barriers. The results of rigid and with quadratic residue diffuser (QRD) coverage are also predicted for comparison.Results: It is found that decreasing the design frequency of PRD shifts the frequency effects towards lower frequencies, and therefore the overall A-weighted insertion loss is improved. It is also found that using wire mesh with reasonably efficient resistivity on the top surface of PRD improves the efficiency of the reactive barriers; however utilizing wire meshes with flow resistivity higher than specific acoustic impedance of air on the PRD top of a diffuser barrier significantly reduces the performance of the barrier within the frequency bandwidth of the diffuser. The performance of PRD covered T-shape barrier at 200 Hz was found to be higher than that of its equivalent QRD barriers in both the far field and areas close to the ground. The amount of improvement compared made by PRD barrier compared with its equivalent rigid barrier at far field is about 2 to 3 dB, while this improvement relative to barrier model .QR4. can reach up to 4- 6 dB.Conclusion: Employing PRD on the top surface of T-shape barrier is found to improve the performance of barriers compared with using rigid and QRD coverage at the examined receiver locations.

Backgrounds and Objectives: Shortage of available water resource and deficiency of rainfall, increasing in population growth and industrial development, suitable use of water resources and pollution prevention is an essential issue in accord with sustainable development and environmental protection. Present study shows the qualitative status of Mehran River and determines its pollution or non pollution tomunicipal wastewater and to assess qualitative characteristics of the water according to international water quality index.Materials and Methods: Padding strand of MEHRAN River from source to end has been done for wistful determination of branches, runoff and wastewater entrances, etc. Necessary decisions were made for determining sampling points and critical and effective points on water quality then water samples were analyzed to determine chemical and microbiological characteristics.Results: Results showed the average of BOD5, COD, TSS, NO3, DO, pH, Turbidity and color are about 80±30, 155±58, 1013±637, 7.3±2, 4.5±3.5 mg/l, 7.2 ±1, 385±238 NTU, 122±70 TCU respectively.Conclusion: It could be concluded that the Mehran River is completely polluted with municipal sewage and is unsanitary. Water quality index varies in the range of 41-52 and the water is classified as number 4. At present the river is in a dangerous ore toxic state and could not be considered as drinking water resource or needs more advanced water treatment units.