Publication Details

Category Text Publication
Reference Category Journals
DOI 10.1186/s12302-020-00336-3
Licence creative commons licence
Title (Primary) Tryptophan-like fluorescence as a fingerprint of dry-weather misconnections into storm drainage system
Author Yin, H.; Wang, Y.; Yang, Y.; Huang, J.; Xu, Z.
Source Titel Environmental Sciences Europe
Year 2020
Department ASAM
Volume 32
Page From art. 61
Language englisch
Supplements https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1186%2Fs12302-020-00336-3/MediaObjects/12302_2020_336_MOESM1_ESM.docx
Keywords Storm drainage system; Dry-weather misconnection; River water intrusion; Fluorescence spectroscopy; Bayesian mass balance model
Abstract Background
Inappropriate dry-weather misconnections into storm drainage system are a demanding environmental problem worldwide, which leads to unexpected dry-weather discharge into surface waters. It often costs a large amount of manpower and resources to identify the source of misconnections and estimate its contributions. In this study, we evaluated the possibility of quantifying proportional source contribution in a storm drainage system with dry-weather misconnections from domestic sewage and river water inflow, using rapid and low-cost fluorescence spectroscopy methods. For this purpose, samples of both misconnection sources and outflows of storm drainage system were collected and analyzed in a downtown catchment of Shanghai, China.
Results
Results showed that fluorescent peak intensity of tryptophan-like T-1 in domestic sewage (802 +/- 126 a.u.) was significantly higher than that in urban river water (57 +/- 12 a.u.), while fluorescent peak intensities of tryptophan-like T-2 in urban river water (732 +/- 304 a.u.) was much higher than that in domestic sewage (261 +/- 64 a.u.) due to increased algal activity in the local river and upstream inflow chemistry. However, only peak T-2 passed the conservative behavior test in the incubation experiments, which could be used as a fingerprint for quantitatively identifying the misconnections. We further developed a Bayesian fluorescence mass balance model (FMBM) to infer the percentage of dry-weather misconnections into the storm drainage system as a function of fluorescence intensities of peak T-2 in the samples of sources and outflow. It was found that the maximum posteriori probability estimate of the percentage of river water intrusion into the storm drains was up to 20.8% in this site, which was validated by the results of on-site investigation.
Conclusion
Our findings implied that in situ fluorescent sensors and Bayesian FMBM for the fingerprint fluorescence peak could be applied to fast track inappropriate dry-weather misconnections into storm drainage system qualitatively and quantitatively with low costs.
Persistent UFZ Identifier https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=23070
Yin, H., Wang, Y., Yang, Y., Huang, J., Xu, Z. (2020):
Tryptophan-like fluorescence as a fingerprint of dry-weather misconnections into storm drainage system
Environ. Sci. Eur. 32 , art. 61 10.1186/s12302-020-00336-3