AbdulGafar Olatunji Tiamiyu

Bio: AbdulGafar Olatunji Tiamiyu is an academic researcher from University of Ilorin. The author has contributed to research in topics: Standard of living & Waterborne diseases. The author has an hindex of 2, co-authored 5 publications receiving 43 citations.

Presence, detection, and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and the sustainable remedial measures

Abstract: The world is inundated by the global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which has resulted in millions of reported cases and loss of many lives since December 2019, when the first case was reported in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. The presence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a virus causing COVID-19, has been confirmed in both the urine and feces of the infected people. In contrast, only the ribonucleic acid of the virus have been continuously isolated in wastewater. Currently, there is limited information on the virulence of SARS-CoV-2 and its infectivity in the wastewater environment; still, fecal-oral contamination and transmission cannot be ruled out yet. Early detection of the virus would have far-reaching benefits in curbing the spread of COVID-19 by employing effective tools like wastewater-based epidemiology to monitor hospital sewage and community wastewater in determining the prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 within the population. Moreover, there is a need to provide sustainable remedial approaches that can be employed to inactivate the virus in wastewater, and protective measures for the personnel and wastewater treatment workers against viral infections to forestall future pandemics and waterborne diseases. This study critically reviewed the knowledge gap focusing on the presence, detection, and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and biosolids. Furthermore, the sustainable remedial measures to address SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater environment are proposed and discussed. This study provides new and useful insights into the presence, detection, and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater environments, while proposing sustainable remedial approaches to preventing the COVID-19 transmission through this medium.

Making Waves

Abstract: OUTSIDE THE marching season, with the Northern Ireland Assembly reinstated and the province in a period of relative peace, it would be easy to assume fewer people are seeking the help of organisations that work with the bereaved or traumatised.

An empirical literature analysis of adsorbent performance for methylene blue uptake from aqueous media

Abstract: Methylene blue (MB) is a heterocyclic aromatic compound used as a medication or as a synthetic dye for textiles. Due to its ecotoxicity, researchers have been investigating its mitigation by the adsorption process. The aim of this review was to analyse the performance of different classes of adsorbent for MB dye uptake based on their maximum adsorption capacity. MB was chosen for this analysis due to the large volume of work that has been done on it over the years. Over 500 research papers published on MB adsorption (within the past 5 years were analysed). This was to help guide the research area on the best class adsorbents for MB uptake thereby pointing the areas of biggest potential to investigators. Composites adsorbents (31%) were the most frequently studied for MB uptake. Other popularly used types were biosorbents (16%) and activated carbon (16%). Polymers and resins, and organic and inorganic nanoparticles were the more favoured constituents for composite adsorbent development. For similar data indices, composite adsorbents yielded a higher adsorption capacity. This suggests that composite adsorbents (especially with constituents of polymers, resins and nanoparticles) perform better for MB uptake. Though polymers and resins had the highest mean, the highest median was for activated carbon. Composite adsorbent was the second highest for mean, median and number of adsorbents above the 1000 mg/g threshold. It was surmised from the analysis that polymers, resins and composites are the best classes of adsorbents for MB uptake.

CuO nanoparticles (CuO NPs) for water treatment: A review of recent advances

Abstract: Copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) are regularly investigated and effective adsorbent materials due to their small size, high surface area, natural abundance of starting material for synthesis, low-cost production processing and non-toxic nature. In this study, the adsorption of pollutants by CuO NPs was reviewed. The goal was to synthesise recent research findings, identify knowledge gaps and predict areas for future work. Conventional chemical processes like microwave heating technique and precipitation are the most popularly employed techniques for the synthesis of CuO NPs. The highest reported adsorption capacity for CuO NPs was 3152 mg/g for fluoride showing it can remove more than 3 times its weight fluoride from the aqueous phase. The best-fit kinetics and isotherm models for adsorption using CuO NPs is the pseudo-second order model (R2 > 0.99) and Langmuir model (R2 > 0.99) respectively for dyes and heavy metals. Thermodynamics analysis revealed that the adsorption by CuO NPs process was majorly spontaneous and endothermic. CuO NPs can be reused for as much as 5 cycles with >80 % recovery of pollutants in most cases. Areas for future work include mechanistic investigations by statistical physics, competitive adsorption and column experiments. Due to the negative ecotoxicological effect of the use of CuO NPs, special care must be taken to remove/recover it from wastewater before environmental release. It is surmised that CuO NPs is an effectively used adsorbent for the mitigation of various pollutants from the aqueous environment.