Publications associées à Assessment of the breakthrough of micropollutants in full-scale granular activated carbon adsorbers by rapid small-scale column tests and a novel pilot-scale sampling approach

Oxidation processes and me

This publication summarizes my journey in the field of chemical oxidation processes for water treatment over the last 30+ years. Initially, the efficiency of the application of chemical oxidants for micropollutant abatement was assessed by the abatement of ...

Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Monitoring an Emergent Pathogen at Low Incidence in Wastewater Using qPCR: Mpox in Switzerland

Tamar Kohn, Timothy R. Julian

Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a complementary approach to clinical case-based surveillance of emergent diseases and can help identify regions with infected people to prioritize clinical surveillance strategies. However, tracking emergent diseases in ...

2024

Why five decades of massive research on heterogeneous photocatalysis, especially on TiO2, has not yet driven to water disinfection and detoxification applications? Critical review of drawbacks and challenges

César Pulgarin, Julian Andrés Rengifo Herrera

For fifty years, heterogeneous photocatalysis has been considered as having potential to remove organic and microbiological pollutants from water under either artificial UV light or sunlight irradiation. However, after tens of thousands of published resear ...

Elsevier Science Sa2023

Predicting Transformation Products during Aqueous Oxidation Processes: Current State and Outlook

Urs von Gunten

Water quality and its impacts on human and ecosystem health presents tremendous global challenges. While oxidative water treatment can solve many of these problems related to hygiene and micropollutants, identifying and predicting transformation products f ...

2023

Inactivation of coxsackievirus B5 by free chlorine under conditions relevant to drinking water treatment

Shotaro Torii

Chlorine disinfection is commonly applied to inactivate pathogenic viruses in drinking water treatment plants. However, the role of water quality in chlorine disinfection of viruses has not been investigated thoughtfully. In this study, we investigated the ...

IWA PUBLISHING2023

Formation of carbonyl compounds during ozonation of lake water and wastewater: Development of a non-target screening method and quantification of target compounds

Urs von Gunten, Joanna Maria Houska

Ozonation of natural waters is typically associated with the formation of carbonyl compounds (aldehydes, ketones and ketoacids), a main class of organic disinfection byproducts (DBPs). However, the detection of carbonyl compounds in water and wastewater is ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2023

Oxidative Water Treatment: The Track Ahead

Urs von Gunten, Yun Ho Lee

Chemical oxidation has been applied in municipal water treatment for more than a century, initially for disinfection. In the early decades, chlorine disinfection was adopted in the fight against waterborne disease. However, the oxidative properties of chlo ...

2023

Sunshine and a pinch of tropical soils: A natural, low-cost photo-Fenton variation for safer water, assisted by H2O2 or percabonate

Michaël Bensimon, César Pulgarin, Stefanos Giannakis, Jérémie Decker, Thomas Guillaume

Clean water is essential for human survival, but access to safe drinking water remains a challenge in resource -limited regions. Herein, we explored a low-cost but effective solution for water potabilization using natural iron sources from soils along with ...

ELSEVIER2023

Ozonation of organic compounds in water and wastewater: A critical review

Urs von Gunten, Sung Eun Lim

Ozonation has been applied in water treatment for more than a century, first for disinfection, later for oxidation of inorganic and organic pollutants. In recent years, ozone has been increasingly applied for enhanced municipal wastewater treatment for eco ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Toward biocontrol of waterborne pathogens: contributions of protists to virus removal and associated mechanisms

Margot Ninon Lauren Olive

Human viruses are widespread in the water environment and pose a risk to human health. Wastewater effluents represent the main source of viruses discharge in the environment, leading to contamination of aquatic ecosystems. Viral pathogens can persist on th ...

EPFL2022

Effect of wastewater treatment and environmental exposure on an enterovirus population

Odile Marie Clotilde Hervás de Nalda-Larivé

The presence of viruses in recreational water can present a risk for human health and wastewater effluent is a source of virus in the environment. Their persistence in the environment influences their probability to find a new host. Studies have shown that ...

EPFL2022

Nanoplastics removal during drinking water treatment: Laboratory- and pilot-scale experiments and modeling

Urs von Gunten

Microplastics detected in potable water sources and tap water have led to concerns about the efficacy of current drinking water treatment processes to remove these contaminants. It is hypothesized that drinking water resources contain nanoplastics (NPs), b ...

ELSEVIER2022

Iodide sources in the aquatic environment and its fate during oxidative water treatment - A critical review

Urs von Gunten

Iodine is a naturally-occurring halogen in natural waters generally present in concentrations between 0.5 and 100 mu g L-1. During oxidative drinking water treatment, iodine-containing disinfection by-products (I-DBPs) can be formed. The formation of I-DBP ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Metabolic, cellular and defense responses to single and co-exposure to carbamazepine and methylmercury in Dreissena polymorpha

Dominique Grandjean, Florian Frédéric Vincent Breider

Carbamazepine (CBZ) and Hg are widespread and persistent micropollutants in aquatic environments. Both pollutants are known to trigger similar toxicity mechanisms, e.g. reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Here, their effects were assessed in the zebr ...

2022

Participatory research to monitor lake water pollution

Luc Patiny, Rachel Aronoff, Carlos Vivar Rios

A participatory research team, concerned about water quality around Lake Geneva, particularly in the Montreux Bay region where some were lifeguards, ran sampling campaigns to determine summertime levels of lake water pollution. The participants were brough ...

WILEY2021

Impact of wastewater on the microbial diversity of periphyton and its tolerance to micropollutants in an engineered flow-through channel system

Kristin Schirmer, Ahmed Tlili

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) play an important role in retaining organic matter and nutrients but to a lesser extent micropollutants. Therefore, treated wastewater is recognized as a major source of multiple stressors, including complex mixtures of ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2021

On the use of leaf water to determine plant water source: A proof of concept

Paolo Benettin

Source water apportionment studies using the dual isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen have revolutionized our understanding of ecohydrology. But despite these developments-mostly over the past decade-many technical problems still exist in terms of linking xyle ...

WILEY2021

Assessment of the effects of wastewater treatment plant effluents on receiving streams using oligochaete communities of the porous matrix

Régis Lionel Vivien

Human activities can disturb the natural dynamics of exchanges between surface water and groundwater in rivers. Such exchanges contribute to the self-purification of the environment and an excess of infiltration can lead to contamination of groundwater. In ...

2019

A Tale of Two Treatments: The Multiple Barrier Approach to Removing Chemical Contaminants During Potable Water Reuse

Urs von Gunten

In response to water scarcity and an increased recognition of the risks associated with the presence of chemical contaminants, environmental engineers have developed advanced water treatment systems that are capable of converting municipal wastewater efflu ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2019

Stability of spatial patterns in water chemistry across temperate ecoregions

Camille Roland Marie Minaudo

Human activity has polluted freshwater ecosystems across the planet, harming biodiversity, human health, and the economy. Improving water quality depends on identifying pollutant sources in river networks, but pollutant concentrations fluctuate in time. Co ...

2019