Fecal indicator bacteria and virus removal in stormwater biofilters: Effects of biochar, media saturation, and field conditioning


Autoři: Benjamin P. Kranner aff001;  A. R. M. Nabiul Afrooz aff003;  Nicole J. M. Fitzgerald aff002;  Alexandria B. Boehm aff001
Působiště autorů: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America aff001;  Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Re-inventing the Nation’s Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt), Stanford, California, United States of America aff002;  California State Water Resources Control Board, Sacramento, California, United States of America aff003;  Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, United States of America aff004
Vyšlo v časopise: PLoS ONE 14(9)
Kategorie: Research Article
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222719

Souhrn

Stormwater biofilters are used to attenuate the flow and volume of runoff and reduce pollutant loading to aquatic systems. However, the capacity of biofilters to remove microbial contaminants remains inadequate. While biochar has demonstrated promise as an amendment to improve microbial removal in laboratory-scale biofilters, it is uncertain if the results are generalizable to the field. To assess biochar performance in a simulated field setting, sand and biochar-amended sand biofilters were periodically dosed with natural stormwater over a 61-week conditioning phase. Impact of media saturation was assessed by maintaining biofilters with and without a saturated zone. Biochar-amended biofilters demonstrated improved Escherichia coli removal over sand biofilters during the first 31 weeks of conditioning though media type did not impact E. coli removal during the last 30 weeks of conditioning. Presence of a saturated zone was not a significant factor influencing E. coli removal across the entire conditioning phase. Following conditioning, biofilters underwent challenge tests using stormwater spiked with wastewater to assess their capacity to remove wastewater-derived E. coli, enterococci, and male-specific (F+) coliphage. In challenge tests, biochar-amended biofilters demonstrated enhanced removal of all fecal indicators relative to sand biofilters. Additionally, saturated biofilters demonstrated greater removal of fecal indicators than unsaturated biofilters for both media types. Discrepant conclusions from the conditioning phase and challenge tests may be due to variable influent chemistry, dissimilar transport of E. coli indigenous to stormwater and those indigenous to wastewater, and differences in E. coli removal mechanisms between tests. Mobilization tests conducted following challenge tests showed minimal (<2.5%) observable mobilization of fecal indicators, regardless of media type and presence of a saturated zone. While our results emphasize the challenge of translating biochar’s performance from the laboratory to the field, findings of this study inform biofilter design to remove microbial contaminants from urban stormwater.

Klíčová slova:

Bacterial biofilms – Biofilms – Contaminants – Effluent – Enterococcus – Water pollution – Biomimetics


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