SARS-CoV-2 in hospital wastewater during outbreak of COVID-19: A review on detection, survival and disinfection technologies.

Currently, the apparition of new SARS-CoV, known as SARS-CoV-2, affected more than 34 million people and causing high death rates worldwide. Recently, several studies reported SARS-CoV-2 ribonucleic acid (RNA) in hospital wastewater. SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted between humans via respiratory droplets, close contact and fomites. Fecal-oral transmission is considered also as a potential route of transmission since several scientists confirmed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in feces of infected patients, therefore its transmission via feces in aquatic environment, particularly hospital wastewater. Hospitals are one of the important classes of polluting sectors around the world. It was identified that hospital wastewater contains hazardous elements and a wide variety of microbial pathogens and viruses. Therefore, this may potentially pose a significant risk of public health and environment infection. This study reported an introduction about the Physical-chemical and microbiological characterization of hospital wastewater, which can be a route to identify potential technology to reduce the impact of hospital contaminants before evacuation. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 in aqueous environment was reviewed. The knowledge of the detection and survival of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and hospital wastewater were described to understand the different routes of SARS-CoV-2 transmission, which is also useful to avoid the outbreak of CoV-19. In addition, disinfection technologies used commonly for deactivation of SARS-CoV-2 were highlighted. It was revealed that, chlorine-containing disinfectants are the most commonly used disinfectants in this field of research. Meanwhile, other efficient technologies must be developed and improved to avoid another wave of the pandemic of COVID-19 infections.

Investigation of (co)-combustion kinetics of biomass, coal and municipal solid wastes.

Investigation of thermal behaviors of biomass waste, biochar, coal, municipal solid waste (MSW) and their mixtures were aimed in the present study using both thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimeter techniques. In fact, this paper intends to interpret the influence of mixtures on activation energy. In this purpose, Coats and Redfern were used. Then, the relative error Δmerror was calculated to quantify the synergism degree. Precisely, it was about 5.34% for biomass/coal, 5.52% for biomass/cardboard, 5.67% for biomass/biochar, 5.93% for biomass/synthetic rubber and 6.05% for biomass/plastic mixtures. This phenomenon was justified by the interaction between C-C bond of biochar, coal and MSW radicals with C-H and C-O bonds of biomass.

Municipal solid waste higher heating value prediction from ultimate analysis using multiple regression and genetic programming techniques.

Municipal solid waste (MSW) management presents an important challenge for all countries. In order to exploit them as a source of energy, a knowledge of their calorific value is essential. In fact, it can be experimentally measured by an oxygen bomb calorimeter. This process is, however, expensive. In this light, the purpose of this paper was to develop empirical models for the prediction of MSW higher heating value (HHV) from ultimate analysis. Two methods were used: multiple regression analysis and genetic programming formalism. Both techniques gave good results. Genetic programming, however, provides more accuracy compared to published works in terms of a great correlation coefficient (CC) and a low root mean square error (RMSE).

Effect of materials mixture on the higher heating value: Case of biomass, biochar and municipal solid waste.

The heating value describes the energy content of any fuel. In this study, this parameter was evaluated for different abundant materials in Morocco (two types of biochar, plastic, synthetic rubber, and cardboard as municipal solid waste (MSW), and various types of biomass). Before the evaluation of their higher heating value (HHV) by a calorimeter device, the thermal behavior of these materials was investigated using thermogravimetric (TGA) and Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analyses. The focus of this work is to evaluate the calorific value of each material alone in a first time, then to compare the experimental and theoretical HHV of their mixtures in a second time. The heating value of lignocellulosic materials was between 12.16 and 20.53MJ/kg, 27.39 for biochar 1, 32.60MJ/kg for biochar 2, 37.81 and 38.00MJ/kg for plastic and synthetic rubber respectively and 13.81MJ/kg for cardboard. A significant difference was observed between the measured and estimated HHVs of mixtures. Experimentally, results for a large variety of mixture between biomass/biochar and biomass/MSW have shown that the interaction between biomass and other compounds expressed a synergy of 2.37% for biochar 1 and 6.11% for biochar 2, 1.09% for cardboard, 5.09% for plastic and 5.01% for synthetic rubber.