Yanyan Zhang

New Mexico State University | NMSU · Department of Civil Engineering

The rapid development of the unconventional oil and gas industry has promoted economic growth in the southwestern region of the United States. One of the major barriers for using treated produced water as an alternative water source is the lack of a comprehensive assessment of produced water quality and environmental toxicity. In this study, we emp...

The data in this report are associated with “Characterization of Produced Water and Surrounding Surface Water in the Permian Basin, the United States” (Jiang et al. 2022) and include raw data on produced water (PW) quality and Pecos River water quality in the Permian Basin, which is one of the major oil and gas producing areas in the U.S. The data...

Municipal wastewater is a reliable source from which water, renewable energy, and nutrients could be recovered for beneficial use. Our previous efforts have documented that an innovative algal-based wastewater treatment (WWT) system could recover energy and nutrients from wastewater while having a lower energy footprint than conventional WWT proces...

This study investigated the impact of seasonal variation and operating conditions on recovery of potable quality water from municipal wastewater effluent using an integrated algal treatment process with a dual forward osmosis (FO)-reverse osmosis (RO) membrane system. Pilot study of the algal process treating primary effluent validated the technica...

A thorough understanding of produced water (PW) quality is critical to advance the knowledge and tools for effective PW management, treatment, risk assessment, and feasibility for beneficial reuse outside the oil and gas industry. This study provides the first step to better understand PW quality to develop beneficial reuse programs that are protec...

Produced water (PW) is a hypersaline waste stream generated from the shale oil and gas industry, consisting of numerous anthropogenic and geogenic compounds. Despite prior geochemical characterization, the comprehensive toxicity assessment is lacking for evaluating treatment technologies and the beneficial use of PW. In this study, a suite of in vi...

Conventional activated sludge-based (CAS) wastewater treatment plants are known to be a source of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and virulence genes (VGs). As an alternative, a single-step mixotrophic algal wastewater treatment (A-WWT) system is proposed here to effectively reduce ARGs and VGs in the final effluent while meeting all the dischar...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impacts of conventional wastewater treatment processes including secondary treatment and chlorination on the removal of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and antibiotic resistant bacteria (ARB), and to assess the association of ARGs with their potential hosts in each treatment process. The results showed c...

Recent reports have pointed out that, at the current rate of development, the world will fail to meet Goal 6 of the United Nation’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to ensure the availability of sanitation and water for all. Over half the world’s population in the middle- and low-income countries will not have sanitation and water with suffi...

Today's wastewater utilities are facing the dilemma of balancing pathological threats of bacteria and viruses in their effluent against health threats associated with the byproducts of disinfection. A possible solution to this dilemma is to adopt secondary treatment technologies capable of concurrent pathogen reduction, minimizing the demand for ex...

Our previous reports have detailed the development of a pilot-scale algal wastewater treatment system (A-WWTS) utilizing a mixotrophic strain, Galdieria sulphuraria. This A-WWTS has consistently achieved discharge standards for organics and nutrients in a single step, concurrently reducing coliform bacteria to undetectable levels. Here, we present...

Our previous reports have documented a single-step algal process for removing biochemical oxygen demand (BOD 5) and nutrients from primary effluent in batch mode. In the current study, we report results from continuous fed-batch operation of this algal system demonstrating consistent removal of BOD 5 and nutrients as well as significant reduction o...

Photoautotrophic algal systems have been investigated as potentially greener and more sustainable alternatives to the traditional bacteria-based wastewater treatment (WWT) systems. This paper presents mixotrophic algal systems as better suited for WWT. Since the literature is void of mixotrophic WWT systems, a brief review of the laboratory results...

Canada has the world's largest oil sands reservoirs. Surface mining and subsequent caustic hot water extraction of bitumen lead to an enormous quantity of tailings (volumetric ratio bitumen:water = 9:1). Due to the zero-discharge approach and the persistency of the complex matrix, oil producers are storing oil sands tailings in vast ponds in Northe...

Previously, anoxic-aerobic membrane bioreactor (MBR) coupled with mild ozonation pretreatment has been applied to remove toxic naphthenic acids (NAs) in oil sands process-affected water (OSPW). To further improve MBR performance, the optimal operation conditions including hydraulic retention time (HRT) and initial ammonia nitrogen (NH4+-N) need to...

In this study, a side-stream process with anoxic/aerobic tanks was designed as a denitrifying enhanced biological phosphorus removal wastewater treatment technology (denitrifying EBPR) to be evaluated for its performance in phosphorous (P) removal as compared to a modified side-stream process using contact/stabilization tanks (modified EBPR). Under...

Biological phosphorous (P) and nitrogen (N) removal from municipal wastewater was studied using an innovative anoxic-aerobic-anaerobic side-stream treatment system. The impact of influent water quality including chemical oxygen demand (COD), ammonium and orthophosphate concentrations on the reactor performance was evaluated. The results showed the...

Concerns are widely raised about the impacts of enormous volumes of oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) on the regional environment in Alberta, Canada. In OSPW, naphthenic acids (NAs) are regarded as the most problematic organic compound group as they have acute toxicity to aquatic organisms. NAs are aliphatic or alicyclic carboxylic acids natu...

This study was focused on how different operating conditions affected the biodegradation of naphthenic acids (NAs) and the microbial community architectures in an anoxic–aerobic membrane bioreactor (MBR) for oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) treatment. After 442 days of continuous optimization, a supplemented NH 4 –N concentration of 25 mg L...

Batch experiments were performed to evaluate biodegradation of raw and ozonated oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) under denitrifying anoxic and nitrifying aerobic conditions for 33 days. The results showed both the anoxic and aerobic conditions are effective in degrading OSPW classical and oxidized naphthenic acids (NAs) with the aerobic cond...

Among all the contaminants in oil sands process-affected water (OSPW), naphthenic acids (NAs) are regarded as the most problematic due to their bio-persistency and acute toxicity to aquatic life. This report compares the NA degradation efficiencies and membrane fouling behaviors of two identical MBRs receiving raw and ozonated OSPWs, respectively....

Two identical anoxic-aerobic membrane bioreactors (MBRs) were operated in parallel for 742 consecutive days for raw and ozonated oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) treatment. The MBRs not only substantially degraded OSPW classical and oxidized NAs, but also demonstrated outstanding membrane fouling control performance (the MBR receiving raw OS...

Photoreactivation is a process where ultraviolet (UV)-induced damage to the DNA of microorganisms can be reversed by exposure to near UV and visible light. To date, most photoreactivation experiments have been carried out under laboratory conditions using standard microorganisms that do not reflect the natural conditions of municipal wastewater eff...

The release of oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) into the environment is a concern because it contains persistent organic pollutants that are toxic to aquatic life. A modified Ludzack-Ettinger membrane bioreactor (MLE-MBR) with a submerged ceramic membrane was continuously operated for 425 days to evaluate its feasibility on OSPW treatment. A...

The development of biodegradation treatment processes for oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) has been progressing in recent years with the promising potential of biofilm reactors. Previously, the granular activated carbon (GAC) biofilm process was successfully employed for treatment of a large variety of recalcitrant organic compounds in domes...

Naphthenic acids (NAs) released into oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) during bitumen processing in Northern Alberta are problematic for oil sands industries due to their toxicity in the environment and resistance to degradation during conventional wastewater treatment processes. Granular activated carbon (GAC) has shown to be an effective me...

Naphthenic acids (NAs) released into oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) during bitumen processing in Northern Alberta are problematic for oil sands industries due to their toxicity in the environment and resistance to degradation during conventional wastewater treatment processes. Granular activated carbon (GAC) has shown to be an effective me...

The development of biodegradation treatment processes for oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) has been progressing in recent years with the promising potential of biofilm reactors. Previously, the granular activated carbon (GAC) biofilm process was successfully employed for treatment of a large variety of recalcitrant organic compounds in domes...

Treatment of oil sands process-affected water (OSPW) using biodegradation has the potential to be an environmentally sound approach for tailings water reclamation. This process is both economical and efficient, however, the recalcitrance of some OSPW constituents, such as naphthenic acids (NAs), require the pre-treatment of raw OSPW to improve its...

Water and wastewater filtration systems often house pathogenic bacteria, which must be removed to ensure clean, safe water. Here, we determine the persistence of the model bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa in two types of filtration systems, and use P. aeruginosa bacteriophages to determine their ability to selectively remove P. aeruginosa. These sy...

Direct membrane filtration is often used to concentrate viruses in water but it may suffer from severe membrane fouling and clogging. Here, a lanthanum-based flocculation method coupled with modified membrane filtration procedures was developed and evaluated to detect viruses in large volume (40L) water samples. The lanthanum-based flocculation met...

Melamine is a nitrogen-rich (67% nitrogen by mass) heterocyclic aromatic compound that could significantly increase effluent total nitrogen concentrations. In this study, we investigated the degradation of melamine and its impact on activated sludge operations by employing two common activated sludge processes, namely the Modified Ludzack-Ettinger...

Wetland assessment tools are being developed and employed in wetland monitoring and conservation based on physical, chemical and biological characterization. In wetland biological assessment, various ecological functions have been described by biological traits of an entire species pool that adapts to different types of wetland environments. Since...

Bacterial biofilms are a growing concern in a broad range of areas. In this study, a mixture of RNA bacteriophages isolated from municipal wastewater was used to control and remove biofilms. At the concentrations of 400 and 4 × 10(7)  PFU/mL, the phages inhibited Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm formation by 45 ± 15% and 73 ± 8%, respectively. At the...

This paper developed a novel strategy to improve the fluorescence in situ hybridization-flow cytometry (FISH-FCM) enumeration performance in filamentous yeast species in activated sludge by snailase partial digestion to fully disaggregate filamentous yeast chains into single cells. A 2 h 2% snailase partial digestion liberated more rod-shaped yeast...

Determination of low-density of bacteria, especially those of pathogenic strains in water, has proven difficult and challenging. Here, we developed and evaluated a lanthanum-based concentration method coupled with quantitative real-time PCR to concentrate and detect selected bacteria (Escherichia coli and Helicobacter pylori) in water. To improve q...

Microbial contaminants such as bacteria and viruses are of great concern in water. As nanotechnology continues to grow, understanding the interactions of nanoparticles with bacteria and viruses is important to protect public health and the environment. In this study, the effect of two commonly used nanoparticles, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs, averag...

Flow cytometry-fluorescent in situ hybridization (FC-FISH) was used to investigate the effect of controlled pH and/or varied organic loading on the content of yeast and bacterial cells in an activated sludge system (AS) individually operating in continuous and batch mode for treatment of high-strength industrial wastewater. Specifically, we attempt...

This study was conducted to compare the effect of influent chemical oxygen demand (COD(in)) level and hydraulic retention time (HRT), two primary components of influent COD loading rate (COD(LR)), on the structure and function of sludge microbial community in a yeast-predominant activated sludge system (1m Hx0.2m D) for synthetic industrial wastewa...

Rapid concentration and detection of microorganisms, particularly pathogens, are important but remain a challenge. In this research, lanthanum chloride (LaCl(3)) was used to concentrate E. coli in water and the results were compared with those obtained using traditional flocculants, such as ferric sulfate and aluminum sulfate. A turbidimetric assay...