A data-derived soft-sensor method for monitoring effluent total phosphorus

The effluent total phosphorus(ETP) is an important parameter to evaluate the performance of wastewater treatment process(WWTP). In this study, a novel method, using a data-derived soft-sensor method, is proposed to obtain the reliable values of ETP online. First, a partial least square(PLS) method is introduced to select the related secondary variables of ETP based on the experimental data. Second, a radial basis function neural network(RBFNN) is developed to identify the relationship between the related secondary variables and ETP. This RBFNN easily optimizes the model parameters to improve the generalization ability of the soft-sensor. Finally, a monitoring system, based on the above PLS and RBFNN, named PLS-RBFNN-based soft-sensor system, is developed and tested in a real WWTP. Experimental results show that the proposed monitoring system can obtain the values of ETP online and own better predicting performance than some existing methods.

Characteristics of microbial community involved in early biofilms formation under the influence of wastewater treatment plant effluent

Effluents from wastewater treatment plants（WWTPs） containing microorganisms and residual nutrients can influence the biofilm formation. Although the process and mechanism of bacterial biofilm formation have been well characterized, little is known about the characteristics and interaction of bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes in the early colonization, especially under the influence of WWTP effluent. The aim of this study was to characterize the important bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic species in the early stage of biofilm formation downstream of the WWTP outlet. Water and biofilm samples were collected 24 and 48 hr after the deposition of bio-cords in the stream. Illumina Miseq sequencing of the 16 S and 18 S rDNA showed that, among the three domains, the bacterial biofilm community had the largest alpha and beta diversity. The early bacterial colonizers appeared to be ＂biofilm-specific＂, with only a few dominant operational taxonomic units（OTUs） shared between the biofilm and the ambient water environment. Alpha-proteobacteria and Ciliophora tended to dominate the bacterial and eukaryotic communities, respectively, of the early biofilm already at 24 hr, whereas archaea played only a minor role during the early stage of colonization. The network analysis showed that the three domains of microbial community connected highly during the early colonization and it might be a characteristic of the microbial communities in the biofilm formation process where co-occurrence relationships could drive coexistence and diversity maintenance within the microbial communities.