Fate of drugs during wastewater treatment

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Recent trends in the determination of pharmaceutical drugs in wastewaters focus on the development of rapid multi-residue methods. This review addresses recent analytical trends in drug determination in environmental matrices used to facilitate fate studies. Analytical requirements for further fate evaluation and tertiary process selection and optimization are also discussed.EPSRC, Northumbrian Water, Anglian Water, Severn Trent Water, Yorkshire Water, and United Utilities

Characterization of clastic sedimentary enviroments by clustering algorithm and several statistical approaches — case study, Sava Depression in Northern Croatia

Abstract This study demonstrates a method to identify and characterize some facies of turbiditic depositional environments. The study area is a hydrocarbon field in the Sava Depression (Northern Croatia). Its Upper Miocene reservoirs have been proved to represent a lacustrine turbidite system. In the workflow, first an unsupervised neural network was applied as clustering method for two sandstone reservoirs. The elements of the input vectors were the basic petrophysical parameters. In the second step autocorrelation surfaces were used to reveal the hidden anisotropy of the grid. This anisotropy is supposed to identify the main continuity directions in the geometrical analyses of sandstone bodies. Finally, in the description of clusters several parametric and nonparametric statistics were used to characterize the identified facies. Obtained results correspond to the previously published interpretation of those reservoir facies

Needs and difficulties of food businesses in the substantiation of health and nutrition claims

The food industry has been struggling with existing guidance on how to prepare health claim dossiers. Hence the EU-funded project PATHWAY-27 seeks to provide a more tailored guidance.Within this project, robust guidelines for the food industry will be developed. The guidelines will be applicable to bioactives and bioactive enriched foods in general, to facilitate health claim documentation and dossiers.Based on a questionnaire, information on the needs and difficulties of the food industry in reaching the requirements established by the national and EU authorities (EFSA) was gathered. Particular emphasis was placed on scientific, economic, technical and technological barriers

Microstructuration of poly(3-hexylthiophene) leads to bifunctional superhydrophobic and photoreactive surfaces

Schematic representation and a preparation route for the poly(3-hexylthiophene) conducting polymer film having both superhydrophobic and visible-light active photocatalytic properties.</p

Operando cathode activation with alkali metal cations for high current density operation of water-fed zero-gap carbon dioxide electrolysers

Continuous-flow electrolyzers allow CO(2) reduction at industrially relevant rates, but long-term operation is still challenging. One reason for this is the formation of precipitates in the porous cathode from the alkaline electrolyte and the CO(2) feed. Here we show that while precipitate formation is detrimental for the long-term stability, the presence of alkali metal cations at the cathode improves performance. To overcome this contradiction, we develop an operando activation and regeneration process, where the cathode of a zero-gap electrolyzer cell is periodically infused with alkali cation-containing solutions. This enables deionized water-fed electrolyzers to operate at a CO(2) reduction rate matching that of those using alkaline electrolytes (CO partial current density of 420 ± 50 mA cm(−2) for over 200 hours). We deconvolute the complex effects of activation and validate the concept with five different electrolytes and three different commercial membranes. Finally, we demonstrate the scalability of this approach on a multi-cell electrolyzer stack, with a 100 cm(2) / cell active area