Changes in isotope ratios during domestic wastewater production

R P S Schilperoort1, H A J Meijer, C M L Flamink

  • 1Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Section of Sanitary Engineering, P.O. Box 5048, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands. r.p.s.schilperoort@tudelft.nl

Related Concept Videos

Microbial Wastewater Treatment01:30

Microbial Wastewater Treatment

Microbial communities in aquatic ecosystems play a key role in the natural breakdown of contaminants introduced through domestic and industrial effluents. Acting as biological catalysts, these microbes change and mineralize a wide range of organic and inorganic pollutants under different redox conditions.In oxygen-rich surface waters, aerobic heterotrophs lead organic matter breakdown, using oxygen as the terminal electron acceptor to efficiently oxidize substrates to carbon dioxide and water.
Mass Spectrometry: Isotope Effect01:13

Mass Spectrometry: Isotope Effect

Most elements exist in nature as a mixture of isotopes. The isotopes differ in weight due to their respective number of neutrons. The molecular weight of a molecule is different depending on the specific isotope of its elements involved. As a result, the mass spectrum of the molecule exhibits peaks from the same fragment at multiple positions. The positions of these mass signals depend on the mass differences between isotopes. Furthermore, the intensity of these signals is dependent on the...
Radioactive Decay and Radiometric Dating02:48

Radioactive Decay and Radiometric Dating

Radioactivity is a spontaneous disintegration of an unstable nuclide and is a random process, as all the nuclei in the sample do not decay simultaneously. The number of disintegrations per unit time is called the activity (A), which is directly proportional to the number of nuclei in the sample. The decay constant (λ) is an average probability of decay per nucleus in unit time.
Isotopes and Radioisotopes01:28

Isotopes and Radioisotopes

In the early 1900s, English chemist Frederick Soddy realized that an element could have atoms with different masses that were chemically indistinguishable. These different types are called isotopes — atoms of the same element that differ in mass. Isotopes differ in mass because they have different numbers of neutrons but are chemically identical because they have the same number of protons. Soddy was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 for this discovery.
An isotope containing more...
Comparative Excretory Systems02:24

Comparative Excretory Systems

Animals have evolved different strategies for excretion, the removal of waste from the body. Most waste must be dissolved in water to be excreted, so an animal’s excretory strategy directly affects its water balance.