Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A chemometric analysis on the fluorescent dissolved organic matter in a full-scale sequencing batch reactor for municipal wastewater treatment

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Rapid monitoring of water quality is crucial to the operation of municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Fluorescence excitation-emission matrix (EEM) in combination with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) has been used as a powerful tool for the characterization of dissolved organic matter (DOM) in WWTPs. However, a recent work has revealed the drawback of PARAFAC analysis, i.e., overestimating the component number. A novel method, parallel factor framework-clustering analysis (PFFCA), has been developed in our earlier work to resolve this drawback of PARAFAC. In the present work, both PARAFAC and PFFCAwere used to analyze the EEMs of water samples from a full-scale WWTP from a practical application point of view. The component number and goodness-offit from these two methods were compared and the relationship between the relative score change of component and the actual concentration was investigated to evaluate the estimation error introduced by both methods. PFFCA score and actual concentration exhibited a higher correlation coefficient (R 2 = 0.870) compared with PARAFAC (R 2<0.771), indicating that PFFCA provided a more accurate relative change estimation than PARAFAC. The results suggest that use of PARAFAC may cause confusion in selecting the component number, while EEM-PFFCA is a more reliable alternative approach for monitoring water quality in WWTPs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Henderson R K, Baker A, Murphy K R, Hambly A, Stuetz R M, Khan S J. Fluorescence as a potential monitoring tool for recycled water systems: a review. Water Research, 2009, 43(4): 863–881

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Yang L, Han D H, Lee B M, Hur J. Characterizing treated wastewaters of different industries using clustered fluorescence EEM-PARAFAC and FT-IR spectroscopy: implications for downstream impact and source identification. Chemosphere, 2015, 127: 222–228

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Bourgeois W, Burgess J E, Stuetz R M. On-line monitoring of wastewater quality: a review. Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology (Oxford, Oxfordshire), 2001, 76(4): 337–348

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. He W, Chen S, Liu X, Chen J. Water quality monitoring in a slightly-polluted inland water body through remote sensing—Case study of the Guanting Reservoir in Beijing, China. Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering, 2008, 2(2): 163–171

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Tartakovsky B, Lishman L A, Legge R L. Application of multiwavelength fluorometry for monitoring wastewater treatment process dynamics. Water Research, 1996, 30(12): 2941–2948

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Reynolds D M, Ahmad S R. Rapid and direct determination of wastewater BOD values using a fluorescence technique. Water Research, 1997, 31(8): 2012–2018

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Zhou Y, Xia S Q, Nguyen B T, Long M, Zhang J, Zhang Z Q. Interactions between metal ions and the biopolymer in activated sludge: quantification and effects of system pH value. Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering, 2017, 11(1): 7

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Xue S, Zhao Q L,Wei L L, Hui X J, Ma X P, Lin Y Z. Fluorescence spectroscopic studies of the effect of granular activated carbon adsorption on structural properties of dissolved organic matter fractions. Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering, 2012, 6(6): 784–796

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Guo J, Sheng F, Guo J H, Yang X, Ma M T, Peng Y Z. Characterization of the dissolved organic matter in sewage effluent of sequence batch reactor: the impact of carbon source. Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering, 2012, 6(2): 280–287

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Ishii S K L, Boyer T H. Behavior of reoccurring PARAFAC components in fluorescent dissolved organic matter in natural and engineered systems: a critical review. Environmental science & technology, 2012, 46(4): 2006–2017

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Yamashita Y, Jaffé R. Characterizing the interactions between trace metals and dissolved organic matter using excitation-emission matrix and parallel factor analysis. Environmental Science & Technology, 2008, 42(19): 7374–7379

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Murphy K R, Hambly A, Singh S, Henderson R K, Baker A, Stuetz R, Khan S J. Organic matter fluorescence in municipal water recycling schemes: toward a unified PARAFAC model. Environmental Science & Technology, 2011, 45(7): 2909–2916

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Carstea E M, Bridgeman J, Baker A, Reynolds D M. Fluorescence spectroscopy for wastewater monitoring: a review. Water Research, 2016, 95: 205–219

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Fang F, Yang Y, Guo J S, Zhou H, Fu C, Li Z. Three-dimensional fluorescence spectral characterization of soil dissolved organic matters in the fluctuating water-level zone of Kai County, Three Gorges Reservoir. Frontiers of Environmental Science & Engineering, 2011, 5(3): 426–434

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Li W H, Sheng G P, Liu X W, Yu H Q. Characterizing the extracellular and intracellular fluorescent products of activated sludge in a sequencing batch reactor. Water Research, 2008, 42(12): 3173–3181

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Stedmon C A, Bro R. Characterizing dissolved organic matter fluorescence with parallel factor analysis: a tutorial. Limnology and Oceanography, Methods, 2008, 6(11): 572–579

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Andersen C M, Bro R. Practical aspects of PARAFAC modeling of fluorescence excitation-emission data. Journal of Chemometrics, 2003, 17(4): 200–215

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Cohen E, Levy G J, Borisover M. Fluorescent components of organic matter in wastewater: efficacy and selectivity of the water treatment. Water Research, 2014, 55: 323–334

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Ou H S, Wei C H, Mo C H, Wu H Z, Ren Y, Feng C H. Novel insights into anoxic/aerobic1/aerobic2 biological fluidized-bed system for coke wastewater treatment by fluorescence excitationemission matrix spectra coupled with parallel factor analysis. Chemosphere, 2014, 113: 158–164

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Rosario-Ortiz F L, Korak J A. Oversimplification of dissolved organic matter fluorescence analysis: potential pitfalls of current methods. Environmental Science & Technology, 2017, 51(2): 759–761

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Del Vecchio R, Blough N V. On the origin of the optical properties of humic substances. Environmental Science & Technology, 2004, 38(14): 3885–3891

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Qian C, Wang L F, Chen W, Wang Y S, Liu X Y, Jiang H, Yu H Q. Fluorescence approach for the determination of fluorescent dissolved organic matter. Analytical Chemistry, 2017, 89(7): 4264–4271

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Ni B J, Xie W M, Liu S G, Yu H Q, Wang Y Z, Gan W, Dai X L. Modeling and simulation of the sequencing batch reactor at a fullscale municipal wastewater treatment plant. American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2009, 55(8): 2186–2196

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  24. APHA. Standard Methods for Examination of Water & Wastewater, 20th ed. Washingtong DC, USA: American Public Health Association, 1998

  25. Lakowicz J R. Fluorescence Quenching: Theory and Applications, 2nd Ed. New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum, 1991

    Google Scholar 

  26. Andersson C A, Bro R. The N-way toolbox for MATLAB. Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems, 2000, 52(1): 1–4

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  27. Le C, Kunacheva C, Stuckey D C. “Protein” measurement in biological wastewater treatment systems: a critical evaluation. Environmental Science & Technology, 2016, 50(6): 3074–3081

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51538011), the Collaborative Innovation Center of Suzhou Nano Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education of China for the support of this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Urban Pollutant Conversion, Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Chen Qian, Wei Chen & Han-Qing Yu

  2. School of Environmental & Energy Engineering, Anhui Jianzhu University, Hefei, 230026, China

    Wei-Hua Li

Authors
  1. Chen Qian
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Wei Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Wei-Hua Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Han-Qing Yu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Han-Qing Yu.

Electronic supplementary material

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Qian, C., Chen, W., Li, WH. et al. A chemometric analysis on the fluorescent dissolved organic matter in a full-scale sequencing batch reactor for municipal wastewater treatment. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. 11, 12 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-017-0962-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-017-0962-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation