Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome – Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in Wuhan, China and spread to more than 114 countries resulting in a pandemic, which was declared by the WHO in March 2020. Tracking the spread of the virus raised a main concern in every country. Many researches proved the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in stool samples of patients, where the genes of this virus gave a positive signal several days prior to the occurrence of symptoms. The fact of viral shedding in stools provides an advantage in utilizing wastewater systems as a tool to monitor the viral prevalence. We tested more than 2900 municipal wastewater samples coming from 49 distinctive area in Dubai, where 28.6% showed positive results. We also looked into the wastewater samples from 198 commercial aircrafts arriving at Dubai Airport, giving a positive result percentage of 13.6%. The presence of SARS-CoV-2 genes was confirmed using TaqPath™ Covid-19 RT-PCR kit, which targets ORF1ab , N gene and S gene. This project shows the significance of utilizing wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) in monitoring the prevalence of various infectious diseases such as SARS-CoV-2, which can assist the decision makers to determine the level of precautionary measures according to the areas of the outbreak. With this in mind, pricewise, WBE is considered cost-effective when comparing to clinical nasal swabs.

This research assessed the removability of chemical oxygen demand (COD) from petroleum effluent using aluminum-based electrocoagulation reactor. A series of batch flow studies have been conducted to evaluate the impact of current density, electrodes separation, and duration of treatment on the removal of COD from the refinery effluent. The COD levels were determined employing the remaining concentrations using spectrophotometer namely Hach-Lang and standard cuvette test (LCC 514, LCK 314, or APC 400). The findings of the current investigation indicate the capacity of the electrocoagulation technique in a relatively short processing time to reduce the COD levels. The greatest efficiency in removing COD has been determined to be 80.0%. After 100 minutes of electrolysis, a current density of 8 mA/cm2 and electrodes separation of 20 mm achieved the highest percentage removal.

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