Mahmoud Mohamed Abdelmomen El Sayed

Water scarcity and increasing environmental pressures have intensified the need for sustainable water management, including the reuse of treated wastewater. This study evaluated the continuous up-flow sand filter as a tertiary treatment process for secondary wastewater effluent. A pilot-scale filtration unit was installed downstream of the secondary treatment at Qaha Wastewater Treatment Plant (QWWTP), Egypt and operated at influent flow rates of 3.9–8.5 m³/h. Performance was assisted for removing turbidity, total suspended solids (TSS), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD₅), E. coli, total nitrogen (TN), and total phosphorus (TP), under three phases: baseline operation, variable influent quality produced by mixing secondary effluent with raw wastewater, and coagulant-assisted filtration using alum or ferric chloride. During baseline and variable influent conditions, the maximum removal efficiencies were 67.0%, 62.1% and 37.3% for turbidity, TSS and BOD₅, respectively. Alum improved the corresponding removals to 94.5%, 71.7% and 55.5%, while ferric chloride achieved 81.4%, 83.8%, and 87.5%, respectively. Overall, the results demonstrate that coagulant-assisted continuous up-flow sand filtration is a robust and practical tertiary treatment approach for upgrading secondary effluents to meet stringent wastewater reuse standards.

Water scarcity is a critical global issue exacerbated by pollution and inefficient water management. Traditional water treatment methods are often insufficient to address complex pollutants. This study investigates the fabrication and performance of photocatalytic membrane (polyethersulfone (PES) membranes incorporated with photocatalytic nanoparticles of titanium dioxide doped with silver) for photodegradation of trace organic compounds (TrOCs) under simulated sunlight irradiation. The membranes were prepared using the non solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) method and tested their photocatalytic activity in degrading proteins such as bovine serum albumin (BSA), and dyes such as methyl orange (MO), and methylene blue (MB). Results indicated that the incorporation of nanoparticles significantly improved the degradation efficiency of the pollutants, with the highest performance observed in photocatalytic membranes with the highest nanoparticles content. The study demonstrates the potential of photocatalytic membranes for advanced water treatment applications, offering a promising solution for removal of complex pollutants, mitigating water pollution and scarcity.

Biochar was created using a simple low-cost kiln that was designed to process any biowaste. The kiln consisted of an inside cylindrical chamber of total capacity 0.272 m³. The temperature of pyrolysis may be raised to 550°C at a rate of 5°C per minute. We looked at five residence times (2,2.5,3,4, and 5 hours) to see how temperature affected the quality of the biochars. The surfaces of the generated biochars were measured for elemental compositions, chemical and physical characteristics, and elemental analysis. The production of trimmings from Ficus trees dropped as the pyrolysis temperature increased from 500°C. As the temperature of pyrolysis increased, the output of volatile matter also dropped. As the pyrolysis temperature rose, so did the ash content and fixed C in biochar from Ficus trees trimmings.