Abstract
Non-target analyses were conducted to characterize and compare the molecular profiles (UHPLC-HRMS fingerprint) of water samples from a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Inlet and outlet samples were collected from three campaigns spaced 6 months apart in order to highlight common trends. A significant impact of the treatment on the sample fingerprints was shown, with a 65–70% abatement of the number of features detected in the effluent, and more polar, smaller and less intense molecules found overall compared to those in WWTP influent waters. Multivariate analysis (PCA) associated with variations of the features between inlets and outlets showed that features appearing or increasing were correlated with effluents while those disappearing or decreasing were correlated with influents. Finally, effluent features considered as relevant to a potentially adverse effect on aqueous media (i.e. those which appeared or increased or slightly varied from the influent) were highlighted. Three hundred seventy-five features common with the 3 campaigns were thus selected and further characterized. For most of them, elementary composition was found to be C, H, N, O (42%) and C, H, N, O, P (18%). Considering the MS2 spectra and several reference MS2 databases, annotations were proposed for 35 of these relevant features. They include synthetic products, pharmaceuticals and metabolites.
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Data availability
All the data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files.
Abbreviations
- DOC:
-
Dissolved organic carbon
- FC:
-
Fold change
- HESI:
-
Heated electrospray ionization source
- PCA:
-
Principal components analysis
- PEG:
-
Polyethylene glycol
- SPE:
-
Solid-phase extraction
- UHPLC-HRMS:
-
Ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with high resolution mass spectrometry
- WWTP:
-
Wastewater treatment plant
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Acknowledgements
We thank Mr. Thomas Ballion for his contribution in preparing and analysing some samples. We also gratefully thank Mr. David Manley for his valuable work in correcting the English.
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French Nouvelle Aquitaine Region and Grand Poitiers funded the PHD student’s salary. European Community (ERDF) contributed to the financing of some analytical devices used in this work.
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Solène Motteau: literature study, experiments, data analysis and interpretation, writing — original draft and review. Marie Deborde: data analysis and interpretation, methodology, supervision, validation, writing and review. Bertrand Gombert: project administration, methodology, supervision, validation, writing and review. Nathalie Karpel Vel Leitner: conceptualization, literature study, methodology, supervision, validation, writing and review. All of the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Motteau, S., Deborde, M., Gombert, B. et al. Non-target analysis for water characterization: wastewater treatment impact and selection of relevant features. Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 4154–4173 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30972-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-30972-0