Srikanth Mutnuri

BITS Pilani, K K Birla Goa · Department of Biological Sciences

India's concern about wastewater generation outpacing the centralised treatment capacity has increased significantly. This study demonstrated an on-beach public toilet equipped with a sustainable decentralised treatment system in Goa, India. The research gap of the number of toilet users, freshwater demand, and wastewater (WW) generated per day in...

Background The use of insufficiently treated wastewater or Faecal sludge in agriculture raises concerns because of the pathogen content. Helminth eggs (HE) are one of the most crucial pathogens for ensuring public health and safety. Widely used disinfection treatment methods do not guarantee the complete inactivation of helminth eggs. The current s...

The nature-based, hybrid vertical-flow constructed wetland (H-VFCW) sequenced with an upflow anaerobic fixed biofilm reactor (UAFBR) was developed to treat blackwater for single households. The H-VFCW filter bed layer's redox zonation and hydraulic retention time (HRT) were designed optimally with the potential of simultaneous nitrification, denitr...

Cultural heritage (CH) comprises physical artifacts, paintings, stonework, traditional activities, frescoes, monuments, and other buildings that are vital to be preserved for future generations. Exposure of these to the effects of environmental factors, including sulfation, microbial cell lysis, primary colonization, etc., leads to their biodeterio...

The vertical flow constructed wetlands (VFCW) for the treatment of domestic wastewater has become a conventional and cost effective treatment system with one of the major disadvantage of elevated nitrate concentrations. The present study makes an effort in providing a new design of anaerobic denitrification unit termed as anaerobic chamber (AC) whi...

Constructed wetlands (CWs) are a group of novel, natural wastewater treatment technologies which principally house microbes with help of plants and filter media. The denitrification rates in vertical flow constructed wetland (VFCW) are sensitive and in most cases complete nitrogen removal does not occur. In current study, two systems were evaluated...

Background: The use of insufficiently treated wastewater or faecal sludge in agriculture raises concerns because of the pathogen content. Helminth eggs are one of the most crucial pathogens for ensuring public health and safety. Widely used disinfection treatment methods do not guarantee the complete inactivation of helminth eggs. The current study...

Septage comprises the solid and liquid constituents of any primary treatment system, including a Septic Tank. In this study, the wastewater collected from a septic tank is passed through a partially converted anaerobic filter, and a vertical flow constructed wetland (VFCW) before being sent to a soak pit. The main objective of this case study was t...

Vertical flow-constructed wetlands (VFCW) are well-established, cost-effective, and sustainable options for wastewater treatment. Along with organic matter removal, wetlands are helpful in the removal of microbial pathogens. This study focuses on understanding the bacterial pathogen removal efficacy of three different design types of VFCWs and unde...

The present case study evaluates the treatment efficiency (R%) of vertical flow constructed wetlands (VFCW) with different design considerations for the efficient treatment of domestic wastewater. Four modified VFCW’s were constructed at the pilot scale to study their overall performance with domestic wastewater as the source. Since traditional VFC...

Electro-oxidation (EO) is an effective wastewater treatment technology but faces several challenges regarding its feasibility and economic acceptance, namely high operational and maintenance costs, insufficient oxidizing agent production, etc. The present study attempts to intensify the in situ EO treatment potential in a membraned and membrane-les...

Electro-oxidation (EO) is an effective wastewater treatment technology but faces several challenges regarding its feasibility and economic acceptance, namely high operational and maintenance costs, insufficient oxidizing agent production, etc. The present study attempts to intensify the in situ EO treatment potential in a membraned and membrane-les...

Laundry processes are huge water consumers and contribute to wastewaters in high volume. In the current report, treatment of greywater (GW) was studied from commercial laundry in BITS Pilani, KK Birla Goa campus, India which produces around 2‐2.5 m3/d of GW. Source laundry GW showed physicochemical parameters like chemical oxygen demand (COD), bioc...

Elephant apple fruit, though bestowed with multifarious medicinal properties and available in many Asian countries, has no known commercial processed product due to its tough fibrous calyces, highly astringent juice, and brown discolouration. In this study, the juice was blended with concentrated whey in different proportions (v/v) for assessing or...

To enable the reliable removal of nitrates from aqueous solutions/treated wastewater, anion exchange resin was used. Ion exchange with strong basic anion exchange resin is an effective way of nitrate removal. Scanning electron microscopy was evaluated to understand the morphology of the resin prior all laboratory studies. Ion exchange resin exhibit...

Bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) are a type of new bioengineered systems or technologies that has integrated microorganisms with the electrochemical-based processes to achieve improved or better redox metabolism. Generally, BESs involves processes where electrical power is generated due to oxidation of organic matter present in waste. Here, the ch...

Vitamin D2 is an essential constituent of human nutrition, bone health, and its deficiency can cause various chronic diseases in humans. To meet the daily requirement of vitamin D2, vitamin D2 enrichment in mushrooms like Agaricus bisporus (abundant with pre-vitamin D2) is essential. Once the mushrooms are fortified, their quantification is require...

Removal of nutrients from blackwater is essential before discharge into the water bodies to avoid harmful anthropological or environmental manifestations. In the present study, two membrane-divided electrochemical cells in series were employed for simultaneous removal of ammoniacal nitrogen (TAN) and orthophosphates (TP) from blackwater and wetland...

Scaling-up of Microbial fuel cells (MFC) involves optimizing parameters like the number of units, electrodes and unit size. This study demonstrates the working of a 10 L scale MFC stack for nutrients recovery (struvite as slow phosphorous release fertilizer) and energy recovery from urine over a three-month analysis period. The MFCs employed, a par...

Constructed wetlands form a unique ecosystem having plants, soil, microbes in which microorganisms play a vital role in the transformation and degradation of pollutants from wastewater. In the present study, French type two-stage vertical flow constructed wetland (VFCW) was used for the treatment of single household greywater (GW). Pilot-scale VFCW...

Even though there is increasing evidence on the benefits of combining electro-Fenton (EF) and anodic oxidation with boron doped diamond anodes (BDD) for the degradation of organic pollutants, the exact contribution of •OH, BDD(•OH) and their synergy in the paired EF-BDD process has still not been clearly established, taking into account i) the appl...

With the advance of the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart sensor networks, accurate understanding of complex data via interface icons is critical for effective decision making, operation management and monitoring. In order to understand how the different domain experience among icon designers and users affects icon recognition and preference level...

A sensitive and selective assay based on liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometric method was developed for quantification of phorate in river water. The chromatographic separation of phorate was achieved on Zorbax C18 column using two mobile phase consisting 0.1% formic acid in methanol, and 0.1% formic acid in MilliQ water (v/v ratio of 96:...

Wastewater from fertilizer industries is rich in ammoniacal nitrogen and orthophosphates. The present study demonstrates the recovery of nutrients from fertilizer industry effluent in the form of microalgal biomass to produce various bioproducts. The study demonstrates the integration of pilot-scale struvite production from fertilizer industrial wa...

Nutrient recovery from source-separated human urine has attracted interest, as it is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus that can be utilized as fertilizer. However, urine also contains pharmaceuticals, steroid hormones, etc. and their removal is crucial as they have detrimental effects on the environment and human health. The current study focuses on...

The development of economically feasible and efficient decentralized onsite treatment of septic tank water or blackwater is the need of the hour. In recent years, Electrochemical oxidation (EO) has been proven to be an efficient alternative treatment technology for use in small-scale, onsite wastewater treatment operations. Recently, the electroche...

The main aim of this study is to treat domestic wastewater in a hybrid Vertical Flow Constructed Wetland (VFCW-4.2 m²) and Microalgal Treatment System (MTS-1m²). The objective is not only to treat Domestic wastewater (DW) but also to produce value added products from microalgal biomass. The domestic wastewater was initially treated by VFCW and the...

Present study aims at exploring parallel nutrient removal from secondarily treated wastewater and biogas production potential of Chlorella vulgaris. The observed growth rate (per day) and doubling time (days) of C. vulgaris was 0.36 and 0.44, respectively. C. vulgaris has removed 31 % COD, 40 % PO4-P , 36 % NH4-N and 38 % TKN from secondarily treat...

Presence of urine in municipal wastewater is a major problem faced by wastewater treatment plants. The adverse effects are noticeable as crystallization in equipment and pipelines due to high concentration of nitrogen and phosphorus. Therefore, improved technologies are required that can treat urine separately at the source of their origin and then...

Silica is a trace-geogenic compound with limited-bioavailability. It inflicts health-perils like pulmonary-silicosis and chronic kidney disease (CKD), when available via anthropogenic-disturbances. Amidst silica-imposed pathologies, pulmonary toxicological-mechanisms are well-described, ignoring the renal-pathophysiological mechanisms. Hence, the p...

Artificial wetlands: Two heads are better than one Where constructed wetlands are unable to remove pathogens from wastewater, an electrochemical cell could step in to tackle the challenge. Artificial wetlands can treat domestic wastewater outside of centralized facilities—making them particularly important in countries where safe wastewater transpo...

Overview: The Internet of Things (IoT) allows for remote management and monitoring of many aspects of everyday life at the individual and industrial levels. However, designing these systems within constraints of cost and operational context can be a real challenge. The sensor network must be strategically designed, which means selecting the most ap...

The present study aims at reclamation of secondarily treated water using the microalga Spirulina platensis. The objective is to consider wastewater pollutants as nutrients for microalgae cultivation. The process led to production of microalgal biomass that can be used for extraction of value-added products with the potential to be commercialized. A...

The main aim of our study was to construct a two-stage vertical flow constructed wetland (VFCW) system to treat single household raw sewage water in India under tropical climate. For selecting the plant species different sets of lab experiments were carried out. Two different plant species (Typha angustata and Canna indica) were considered for thei...

Chronic-Kidney-Disease of Unknown-etiology (CKDu) has been reported in developing-countries like Sri-Lanka, India and Central-America without sparing the Indian sub-district (namely Canacona) located in south-Goa. The disease etiology is unlinked to common causes of diabetes and hypertension and assumed to be environmentally induced due to its asym...

The present study deals with the synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) from Rhynchosia rufescens and to evaluate its cytotoxic effect mediated through induced apoptosis. The reduction and capping of phytoconstituents was confirmed using FTIR demonstrating O–H and C–H stretching at different peaks. The size and the shape of the particle were det...

Bioaugmentation, Biostimulation and Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) of catabolic genes have been proven for their role in bioremediation of hydrocarbons. It also has been proved that selection of either biostimulation or bioremediation varies for every contaminated site. The reliability of HGT compared to biostimulation and bioremediation was not te...

Aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons are environmental pollutants of serious concern. Their bioavailability is the major limiting factor that makes the bioremediation process slow. Therefore, the present study focuses on biodegradation of non-aqueous-phase liquids (NAPL) by a halophilic consortium (Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia fergusonii)...

Indigo, is blue of blue jeans, a synthetic dye used on large scale all over the world. Chemical production of the dye is taking a new route towards bacterial production to overcome the environmental effects that are posed by the synthetic blue powder (Indigo). In the present work a strain Pandoraea sp. isolated from the oil contaminated soil is fou...

Anaerobic co-digestion of organic matter improves digester operating characteristics and its performance. In the present work, food waste was collected from the institute cafeteria. Two types of sludge (before centrifuge and after centrifuge) were collected from the fluidised bed reactor of the institute treating sewage wastewater. Food waste and s...

Abstract: Anaerobic digestion is gaining enormous attention due to the ability to covert organic wastes into biogas, an alternative sustainable energy. Methanogenic community plays a significant role in biogas production and also for proficient functioning of the anaerobic digester. Therefore, this study was carried out to investigate the methanoge...

Biogas is one of the most promising sources of renewable energy in today’s world. Liquid and the solid digestates are the byproducts of anaerobic digestion of various kinds of wastes to produce biogas. Disposal of liquid digestate is one of the major issues faced by the existing biogas plant facilities worldwide. In this study, liquid digestate fro...

The samples for food waste (FW) and septage were collected from six localities of Nashik city. Physical and chemical characterizations of the wastes were carried out. A Biomethanation potential (BMP) assay was developed to determine the ultimate biodegradability and associated methane yield during the anaerobic methanogenic fermentation of organic...

Aliphatic hydrocarbons are one of the major environmental pollutants with reduced bioavailability. The present study focuses on the effect of hydroxy cucurbit[6]uril on the bioavailability of hydrocarbons. A bacterial consortium was used for biodegradation studies under saline and non-saline conditions. Based on denaturing gradient gel electrophore...

One-pot rapid synthesis of face-centered cubic silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) has been successfully accomplished using fermented cow urine as a reducing medium coupled with ultrasonication at an alkaline pH (9.5) in 1 min. AgNPs formation was monitored using UV-visible spectrophotometer by recording surface plasmon resonance at 365 nm. Transmission e...

This study evaluated the possibility of pretreating selected solid fraction of an anaerobic digester treating food waste to lower the hydraulic retention time and increase the methane production. The study investigated the effect of different pretreatments (thermal, chemical, thermochemical and enzymatic) for enhanced methane production from cottag...

Bacterial diversity in solar salterns and a simulated solar saltern under laboratory conditions was studied. The two systems were compared at the pre-salt harvesting phase and salt harvesting phase using Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE). Bacterial composition was dominated by Gammaproteobacteria and more specifically with members of A...

One-pot rapid synthesis of face-centered cubic silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) has been successfully accomplished using fermented cow urine as a reducing medium coupled with ultrasonication at an alkaline pH (9.5) in 1 min. AgNPs formation was monitored using UV-visible spectrophotometer by recording surface plasmon resonance at 365 nm. Transmission e...

Background Rock phosphate deposits are non-renewable and are facing a decline. Due to this, phosphate fertilizers are going to be limited in future. Struvite is a crystalline mineral substance containing equimolar amount (1:1:1) of magnesium ammonium and phosphate ions (MgNH4PO4·6H2O), a good source of phosphorus and a slow release fertilizer. In t...

Terra Preta (TP) is a composting technique which involves charcoal addition and lactic acid fermentation. Terra Preta sanitation can act as a terrestrial carbon sequestration technique which helps to alleviate global warming. It has potential for enhancing sustainable agricultural production by increasing soil fertility. Our institute has a wastewa...

Terra preta do indio (TP) is black earth-like anthropogenic soil formed from organic wastes involving addition of charcoal to organic wastes and subsequent lactic acid formation. It has a great potential as social benefits in enhancing sustainable agricultural production by increasing soil fertility without mineral fertiliser addition. Due to these...

The focus of our work is on anaerobic digestion of locally available agro wastes like coconut oil cake, cashew apple waste, and grass from lawn cuttings. The most productive agro waste, in terms of methane yield, was coconut oil cake and grass. The results showed that the initial volatile solids concentration significantly affected the biogas produ...

Two bacterial strains, i.e. Pseudomonas mendocina and Ochrobactrum sp. were isolated from bilge oil contaminated water of Mormugao harbour, Goa, India and grown in a culture medium with hexadecane as the sole carbon source. Pseudomonas mendocina was used in further studies as it was the dominant strain. This strain effectively degraded tetradecane,...

The potential of biogas generation from anaerobic digestion of different waste biomass in India has been studied. Renewable energy from biomass is one of the most efficient and effective options among the various other alternative sources of energy currently available. The anaerobic digestion of biomass requires less capital investment and per unit...

Aliphatic hydrocarbons are one of the main components of oil contamination. Bioremediation is considered to be a cost-effective treatment option among the conventional treatment methods with bioavailability being the limitation. Chemical surfactants could be used to increase the bioavailability of the hydrocarbons but they showed marked toxicity an...

Food waste is the single largest component of the waste stream by weight. In the present work, we attempted to study the effect of caffeine and saponin on anaerobic fermentation of food waste to examine their potential influence on biogas production at 8% total solids (TS) content. Addition of caffeine at 50, 100, and 150 ppm to the food waste on t...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are worldwide environmental pollutants. Their bioavailability is limited by a low aqueous solubility, which causes specific adaptations in degrading bacteria. To compare bacterial degrading behavior, a study was conducted on the mineralization, metabolization and formation of biomass from (14)C-anthracene by...

The adaptation of fatty acid composition of Chromohalobacter israelensis, a euryhalophilic bacterium, grown at different salt concentrations was studied. C. israelensis tolerated NaCl up to concentrations of 20% (w/v) and showed optimal growth at 7% (w/v). Major fatty acids of this bacterium were palmitic acid (16:0), stearic acid (18:0), palmetole...