Physiochemical treatments have been found to be effective for treatment of industrial effluents compared to biological methods. However most physiochemical processes (advanced oxidation processes-AOP, membrane filtration) suffer beacuse of higher costs and intensive energy requirements. Amongst different physiochemical processes adsorption using activated carbon has the advantage of ease of operation, safety and less energy intensive compared to other methods. Also activated carbon has been shown to be equally efficient for refractory organics as well as heavy metals. However most of the commercial activated carbons are expensive. The aim of our proposed research is to manufacture activated from locally available agricultural waste products such as pine cones, pine bark/pruning, corn cobs, rice husk, tobacco biomass and Fir wood residuals. A series of physical and chemical activation methods will be used to produce activated carbon tuned to remove the desired contaminants. In the end possible methods for recovery of dyes and metals will be investigated which will further improve the cost effectiveness of the project.  Our work will help to introduce cheaper locally available adsorbents for wastewater treatment, treat industrial waste at minimum cost, and createresearch interests and job opportunities in this emerging field of adsorbent production.

Phosphorus (P) is of vital importance for plant production due to the plant metabolic requirements for growth and replication. However, P is taken up by plants and microorganisms only as orthophosphate (Pi). And soil microorganisms known to be more efficient for the assimilation of available P. Therefore, P limits the productivity of plants in many terrestrial ecosystems and is often the first or second element limiting aboveground net primary productivity of forests. Although the use of fertilizers is compensating the deficiency of phosphorus but it gives a worst impact on environment. An important strategy to overcome these problems is the use of natural renewable resources such as soil microorganisms which act as a sink and a source of available phosphorus (P) by mediating key processes in the biogeochemical P cycling. They can regulate the energy transfer processes with low input. In this context the microbial loop, based upon the predation of bacteria by their predator nematodes such as bacteria feeding nematodes, is thought to play a major role in the mineralization of nutrients such as phosphorus in terrestrial ecosystems. However, little is known about the impact of bacterial predation by nematodes on P nutrition of woody plants.

My planned work is in the context of the forth-coming P crisis that will limit biomass production very soon. To face this crisis, I propose to find innovative strategies aiming at better exploiting the soil and microbial P pools. I plan to focus my research activities on using the potential microbial strains which can improve the plant growth in a cheap and renewable way as biofertilizer. My main strategy will rely on a better exploitation of the biological complexity existing between bacteria, their grazers such as bactivorous nematodes. Research aims: Does the nematodes predation of bacterial populations allow it to recycle P effectively after they have immobilized?; (ii) How bacterial predation by bacterivorous nematodes effects bacterial community composition in soil-root under natural environment?; (iii) Does bacterial predation by nematodes improves the growth of pine seedlings?

One of the biggest challenges of 21st century is safe water-supplies and environmental sanitation which are vital for protecting the environment, improving health and alleviating poverty. Heavy metal contamination of soil resulting from wastewater irrigation is a cause of serious concern due to the potential health impacts of consuming contaminated produce. The impact of contaminated water on the crop growth and soil properties has not been evaluated yet for Mandroach stream in Abbottabad. The proposed study aim to assess the water quality of Mandroach Stream at various points from Takia Camp (Abbottabad) to Sarai Saleh (Harripur). The effect of polluted water on the soil profiles will be investigated along Mandroach stream in the study area along with studying the effects of polluted water on various growth parameters of selected crop (wheat).The study will involve the analysis of Mandroach stream water aftermath contamination caused by mixing of domestic wastewater. The present study will fill missing gaps by generating information on the effect of contaminated wastewater of Mandroach stream on crop growth and productivity.

HEC funded project

In this study up flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) will be used to treat carwash wastewater at varying room temperature with different hydraulic retention times ranging from 4 to 36 h for three months of operational time period. The samples will be run in dilutions of 70% (30% wastewater and 70% clean water) for one week, 40% second week and then shift to 100% (without dilution of carwash wastewater). The operating conditions that will be interpreted are COD, BOD and sCOD (soluble COD), TS and VS for kinetics study. To study the hydrocarbon GC-MS (gas chromatograph and mass spectrometry) analysis will be performed before and after the treatment.  Arrhenius and monod model can be applied to calculate activation energy, substrate utilization rate and other kinetics parameters. The main objectives of this research are to study substrate utilization rate constant (k), decay rate constant (kd), yield coefficient (Yg), half velocity constant (Ks) and maximum specific growth rate (µm) of carwash wastewater treating through UASB. Kinetic modeling-based studies give a good insight into reaction mechanism and help to describe several specific parameters to monitor the system performance. This study will help us to find most economical and sustainable anaerobic system for carwash industry wastewater treatment.

Abstract of the project:Industrial pollution is a primary type of point
pollution and metals are the main cause of toxicity in living organisms.
The reason that wastes have been accepted into the sewers despite their
environmental consequences has been in large part based on the assumption
that if industry was not provided with a cheap disposal system this would
adversely affect economic and industrial growth and would pose a threat to
the living standards of residents living around these industries. This
assumption can easily be challenged both in narrow economic terms and also
in terms of the loss to the community of environmental amenity. Hattar
Industrial Estate (HIE) comprises more than 200 industrial units in
District Haripur Pakistan. Majority of industrial units release wastewater
containing inorganic substances, heavy metals and hazardous organic
compounds. It is very important to completely characterize these
wastewater streams so as to devise a treatment strategy for HIE effluents.
The present investigation will also evaluate the effect of heavy metals on
anaerobic process.

In recent era development and urbanization rises, the industrial emissions and use of more vehicles has seems to be in common practice. The automobile fuel release oxides of nitrogen, sulphur, ozone and metals in the form of noxious gases (PbO₂), mix with air form filth, streadily it settles down on ground, infra structure, existing biota and even skin of the Humans.The absorption of these metals causes constant alteration in metabolic processes of the organisms. In inspection of these facts the scenarios are used to explore the future status of the climate change and development of strategies to cope with coming worse situation. 1-      An extensive survey for random sampling of filth powder, vehicular smoke, bilge water, plant species growing along roadside from minimum ten highly polluted points from Hattar industrial estate (Haripur) to Mansehra city.  

2-      Identification of metal indicator species, excluder/detoxifier plant species

3-      To make a comparative gradients among different pollutants at different localities

4-      To make a comparison among circulation of vehicle smoke, air and street filth seep into the water due to constant and heavy rain fall in abbottabad

5-      To raise the baseline paradigms creating pollution and key contributor for contamination of food web.

This study is designed to explore the existing corrosion scale compositions (or corrosion by-products) in some targeted water supply distribution systems (DWDSs) using physiochemical characterization techniques including X-rays diffraction (XRD), scanning electron micrograph (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and analyzing some of the selected physiochemical quality parameters at water sources and tap stand. 

As the case in other African countries, Tanzania has been attracting investors in the mining of gold and has provided significance contributions to the national economy. These include provision of education facilities, employment, water, road network improvements, provision of soft loans to local people and health services. Nevertheless, such large scale mining industries come with some detrimental environmental effects which impact the livelihoods and health of the communities including polluting water resources. The pollutant like Gold, Nickel, Chromium, Copper and Lead are largely responsible for aforesaid issues. Although mining provides enormous social and economic benefits to the nation, the long term adverse effects on the environment and public health cannot be overlooked. Mining, mineral processing and metallurgical extraction are the three principal activities of gold mining industries which produce wastes. Mineral processing also known as beneficiation aims to physically separate and concentrate the ore minerals using physical and chemical techniques. Large quantity of wastewater is produced during these activities which is release to the environment. Heavy metal pollution like Zn, Ni, Pb, AS, Cu, Cd, Co, Hg and acid mine drainage is a very important environmental concern due to waste materials containing metal rich sulfides from mining activity . This is a dire need to remove these contaminants via suitable technology. In this regard, adsorption technology can be a good choice for field scale application.

1. To identify the plastic degrading algae
2. Isolation of the plastic degrading algae
3. Biodegradation of the plastic by algae 

What hypothesis will be tested:Rendering industry releases highly polluted wastewater with COD more than 2 g L^-1, ammonium 30 mg L^-1 and odor threshold units greater than 1000 threshold odor number (TON). These ammonium contents remain in effluent after preliminary treatment. Deammonification process faces many challenges like high COD/N ratio and longer doubling time of nitrosomonas and nitrobacter. Basis of these challenges it is hypothesized that up flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) effluent will be treated in oxic zone for nitrification at DO between 0.5 -1 mg L^-1 than forward to strict anaerobic zone at 30-35^oC, pretreatment with UASB will facilitate to reduce COD/N ratio.  In this study sodium chlorate may stop nitrification which will results in more nitrite production than nitrate. This will facilitate the production of direct nitrogen from nitrite. As biological process capable of anaerobic transformation of NH₄⁺ to nitrogen gas with NO₂ as electron acceptor. Third hypothesis is to explore effectiveness of nitrifying bacterial in microbial fuel cell for bioelectricity production. 

Why is it important:Free ammonia is toxic to fishes if released in to fresh water bodies and it exert significant nitrification oxygen demand with severely depleting the dissolved oxygen. Transfer of ammonium to ammonia is depends upon pH. Mostly wastewater receiving channels are already polluted and releases odor when ammonium-N is present. It is already reported that some cattles died after drinking such wastewater.

What has already been done: Nitrification potential to form nitrite can be facilitated by ammonium sulphate and further oxidation to nitrate formation can be controlled by sodium chlorate in soil water solution (Hoffman, 2007). In mangroves a study conducted to decrease nitrification by using polybrominatd diphenyl ether (Chen, 2016). To clarify the heterotrophic and autotrophic bacteria in nitrification process in soil with ¹⁵N-ammonium isotopic pool dilution with acetylene as inhibitor was tested to stop autotrophic nitrification and sodium chlorate used to stop the heterotrophic nitrification (Wang, 2014). Allylthiourea had been known to stop nitrification process to enhance the algae growth with due preference of ammonium than nitrite and nitrate (Krustok, 2016). In this proposed research only sodium chlorate will be used in oxi zone during nitrogen removal from wastewater. In previous study sodium chlorate is known to stop nitrate formation in soil.

Methodology:This proposed research project will have three experimental setup (fig 1) and each will consists of UASB, oxic and anaerobic sections. Setup 1 will be operated as control at ambient temperature, setup 2 will run with sodium chlorate and 3 without sodium chlorate. Setup 2 & 3 will operate at temperature 30-35^oC whereas Electrodes will be installed in UASB and anaerobic part of each setup. UASB will be used to reduce total and soluble COD for desirable COD/N ratio before feeding to oxic zone. In setup 2 sodium chlorate is added at oxic zone and its effluent forwarded to anaerobic zone where nitrite will transform into nitrogen gas. Setup 3 oxic zone ammonium is forcedto transform into nitrate and nitrite and later it will denitrify in anaerobic zone. In setup 3 no sodium chlorate will be added. In oxic zone DO will be set from range 0.5 to 1 mg L^-1 along with COD/N ratio 0.2-0.5. Installed anode electrodes in anaerobic part will be connected with cathode to monitor the electron flow. This will act as microbial fuel cell. In three experimental setup six microbial fuel cell will be working. Voltage prodcution potential of heterotrophs (UASB) and nitrifying anammox bacteria will be measured and compared. 

Expected results:This proposed setup will be successful to reduce high COD load from rendering wastewater, better handling of ammoinium nitrogen through anammox system as proposed above paragraph. Treated water will have less odorous compounds and improve the existing condition.  In this study impact of anammox procedure in nitrogen removal and on bioelectricity generation will also be explored along with and without sodium chlorate in oxic zone. Nitrogen would be removed from wastewater without extra energy input and no carbon dioxide will be released to climate.

Data analysis: Obtained results (CODt, CODs, ammonium-N, nitrate-N, nitrite-N, alkalinity, COD/N, DO, TS, TSS,  and VSS) from each setup will be analyzed. Statistical tools such as ANOVA and t-test will be used to study the significance between three setup. Microbial fuel cell will be analyzed for their efficiency among six by using volts, ampare, columbic efficiency and resistance of the circuit. Species identification by using PCR-DGGE.

Significance to the funder: This proposed study is an applied research and after successful results a proto type system will be installed at rendering plant. This research activity will help to develop more understanding between university and industry. At the moment rendering or poultry feed industry releases highly polluted wastewater which going to stream without any treatment. I think this is an only industry which has not been focused yet in Pakistan. Moreover the methodology will help to reduce carbon dioxide emission during wastewater treatment.

Soil contamination by engine oil or motor has long been a severe environmental problem that needs to be addressed. This toxin builds up in the food chain and pose a serious hazard to human, animal and plant existence. Automobile usage and chemical process industries discharge this pollutant into the environment. To address this problem, a long-term, environment-friendly approach is needed to return polluted sites to their natural state prior to pollution. Incineration, excavation, leaching, electrokinetics, thermal desorption, volatilization, and other physicochemical techniques are currently being used, but due to the limitations of these techniques, phytoremediation has been found to be a cost-effective, non-invasive, and eco-friendly method of reclaiming sites contaminated with pollutants such as crude oil products, heavy metals, pesticides, dyes, and other chemicals.

Many leguminous plants have been researched in the phytoremediation process, however Hydrocotyle umbellata, to the best of my knowledge, is a plant whose phytoremediation potentials on hydrocarbon contaminated sites has not been studied. As a result, I have decided to assess the plant’s performance in remediating and reclaiming spent engine oil contaminated soil. This research will take 60 days to complete and has been broken into two phases. Prior to treatment with different concentrations of spent engine oilin separate experimental pots and plant sowing, the physicochemical characteristics (moisture, pH, organic carbon, organic matter, Ash content, Nitrogen contents and C: N ratio) of the soil will be evaluated. In the second phase, the determination of the plant’s remediation potentials will be carried out. The results of this research will determine whether Hydrocotyle umbellatashould be used in the clean-up or reclamation of soil contaminated by spent engine oil.