Scholars@Duke
Jeseth Delgado Vela

Jeseth Delgado Vela

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Civil and Environmental Engineering
jeseth.delgadovela@duke.edu
Wilkinson 203, Box 90287, Durham, NC 27708
121 Hudson Hall, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications

Phage phylogeny, molecular signaling, and auxiliary antimicrobial resistance in aerobic and anaerobic membrane bioreactors.

Journal Article Water research · June 2024 Phage emit communication signals that inform their lytic and lysogenic life cycles. However, little is known regarding the abundance and diversity of the genes associated with phage communication systems in wastewater treatment microbial communities. This ... Full text Cite

Wastewater surveillance for bacterial targets: current challenges and future goals.

Journal Article Applied and environmental microbiology · January 2024 Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) expanded rapidly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the public health emergency has ended, researchers and practitioners are looking to shift the focus of existing wastewater surveillance programs to other targets, ... Full text Open Access Cite

Metagenomic Analysis of the Antibiotic Resistance Risk between an Aerobic and Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor

Journal Article ACS ES and T Water · July 14, 2023 Membrane bioreactors are advanced treatment technologies that, compared to conventional treatment processes, are expected to reduce antibiotic resistance spread in the environment due to their superior biomass retention. In this study, metagenomic sequenci ... Full text Cite

Emerging investigator series: the role of phage lifestyle in wastewater microbial community structures and functions: insights into diverse microbial environments

Journal Article Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology · June 2, 2023 For over a century, environmental engineers have attempted to control the prokaryotic community biological wastewater treatment processes, but there is growing interest in both understanding and harnessing the activity of phages in wastewater bioprocesses. ... Full text Open Access Cite

Innovations in Process Engineering.

Journal Article Water environment research : a research publication of the Water Environment Federation · May 2023 Full text Cite

Robustness of partial denitrification-anammox (PdNA) in filters with methanol and glycerol as carbon sources

Journal Article Environmental Science: Water Research and Technology · January 24, 2023 Partial denitrification-anammox (PdNA) has a significant application potential for retrofitting plants for more intensified and cost-effective nitrogen removal. Therefore, demonstrating the reliability and robustness of PdNA in polishing filters will advan ... Full text Cite

Integrated Modeling and Lab-Scale Investigations Demonstrate the Impact of Sulfide on a Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor

Journal Article ACS ES and T Water · December 9, 2022 An emerging innovation in the wastewater treatment field is the application of membrane aerated biofilm reactors (MABRs) as low-energy and small-footprint nitrogen removal technologies. MABRs use membranes supplied with oxygen to grow mixed-redox counter-d ... Full text Cite

Comparing Rates of Change in SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater Load and Clinical Cases in 19 Sewersheds Across Four Major Metropolitan Areas in the United States

Journal Article ACS ES and T Water · November 11, 2022 There is no standard approach to interoperate the multiple SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance data sets generated during the pandemic. We tested several data processing approaches on wastewater surveillance data sets generated from 19 sewersheds across fou ... Full text Cite

Erratum: Media selection for anammox-based polishing filters: Balancing anammox enrichment and retention with filtration function.

Journal Article Water environment research : a research publication of the Water Environment Federation · June 2022 Full text Cite

Mainstream partial denitrification-anammox in sand and expanded clay deep-bed polishing filters under practical loading rates and backwashing conditions.

Journal Article Water environment research : a research publication of the Water Environment Federation · May 2022 This study focused on evaluating the feasibility of expanded clay and sand as media types for mainstream partial denitrification-anammox (PdNA) in deep-bed single-media polishing filters under nitrogen and solids loading rates as well as backwash condition ... Full text Cite

Media selection for anammox-based polishing filters: Balancing anammox enrichment and retention with filtration function.

Journal Article Water environment research : a research publication of the Water Environment Federation · May 2022 Retrofitting conventional denitrification filters into partial denitrification-anammox (PdNA)- or anammox (AnAOB)-based filters will reduce the needs for external carbon addition. The success of AnAOB-based filters depends on anammox growth and retention w ... Full text Cite

Advancing full-scale partial denitrification-anammox (PdNA) filters: design and operation guidelines

Conference 95th Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference, WEFTEC 2022 · January 1, 2022 Applying partial denitrification-anammox (PdNA) in deep-bed polishing filters would allow nitrogen removal in a more sustainable and cost-effective way. Full-scale implementation of PdNA filters has not been widely done despite the potential that PdNA offe ... Cite

Preventing Scientific and Ethical Misuse of Wastewater Surveillance Data.

Journal Article Environmental science & technology · September 2021 Full text Cite

Sulfide alters microbial functional potential in a methane and nitrogen cycling biofilm reactor.

Journal Article Environmental microbiology · March 2021 Cross-feeding of metabolites between coexisting cells leads to complex and interconnected elemental cycling and microbial interactions. These relationships influence overall community function and can be altered by changes in substrate availability. Here, ... Full text Cite

Standardizing data reporting in the research community to enhance the utility of open data for SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance.

Journal Article Environmental science : water research & technology · January 2021 SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection in wastewater is being rapidly developed and adopted as a public health monitoring tool worldwide. With wastewater surveillance programs being implemented across many different scales and by many different stakeholders, it is criti ... Full text Open Access Cite

Carbon Source Selection for Deep-bed Partial Denitrification – Anammox (PdNA) Polishing Filters

Conference 94th Annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference, WEFTEC 2021 · January 1, 2021 Applying partial denitrification – anammox (PdNA) in polishing filters as a final treatment step would allow stringent nitrogen limits to be met while minimizing the use of external carbon for denitrification. This study showed the comparison of methanol v ... Cite

Sensor-mediated granular sludge reactor for nitrogen removal and reduced aeration demand using a dilute wastewater.

Journal Article Water environment research : a research publication of the Water Environment Federation · July 2020 A sensor-mediated strategy was applied to a laboratory-scale granular sludge reactor (GSR) to demonstrate that energy-efficient inorganic nitrogen removal is possible with a dilute mainstream wastewater. The GSR was fed a dilute wastewater designed to simu ... Full text Open Access Cite

Partial denitrification – anammox (PdNA) implementation in polishing filters: Performance and Phosphorus limitations

Conference 93rd Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference 2020, WEFTEC 2020 · January 1, 2020 Development of a partial denitrification – anammox (PdNA) biofiltration strategy as a final treatment step would allow stringent nitrogen limits to be met while minimizing the use of external carbon for denitrification. For plants that are also required to ... Cite

Quantifying and assessing wet-weather resilience of urban water resource recovery facilities

Conference 93rd Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference 2020, WEFTEC 2020 · January 1, 2020 There is a need to advance the resilience of wastewater treatment systems to extreme weather events because many cities are expected to experience an increase in intensity of extreme rain events coupled with a decrease in the number of rainy days [1]. In t ... Cite

Current State of and Future Opportunities for Prediction in Microbiome Research: Report from the Mid-Atlantic Microbiome Meet-up in Baltimore on 9 January 2019.

Journal Article mSystems · October 2019 Accurate predictions across multiple fields of microbiome research have far-reaching benefits to society, but there are few widely accepted quantitative tools to make accurate predictions about microbial communities and their functions. More discussion is ... Full text Open Access Cite

Media selection for enrichment of anammox in polishing filters

Conference WEFTEC 2019 - 92nd Annual Water Environment Federation's Technical Exhibition and Conference · January 1, 2019 Application of short-cut nitrogen removal strategies at treatment plants that are required to meet very low total nitrogen limits has driven the need for development of polishing technologies that achieve simultaneous removal of ammonium and nitrate from w ... Cite

Sensor-mediated control for aerobic granular sludge process treating mainstream anaerobic effluent

Conference 91st Annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference, WEFTEC 2018 · January 1, 2019 The aim of this study is to develop a sensor-mediated control strategy with an aerobic granular sludge reactor (GSR) for mainstream energy efficient nitrogen removal. A bench-scale aerobic GSR was constructed and operated for over 450 days while treating s ... Cite

Elucidating the impact of microbial community biodiversity on pharmaceutical biotransformation during wastewater treatment.

Journal Article Microbial biotechnology · November 2018 In addition to removing organics and other nutrients, the microorganisms in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) biotransform many pharmaceuticals present in wastewater. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between pharmaceutical biot ... Full text Open Access Cite

Sulfide inhibition of nitrite oxidation in activated sludge depends on microbial community composition.

Journal Article Water research · July 2018 Increasingly, technologies that use sulfide as an electron donor are being considered for nitrogen removal; however, our understanding of how sulfide affects microbial communities in nitrifying treatment processes is limited. In this study, we used batch e ... Full text Cite

The membrane aerated biofilm reactor for nitrogen removal from mainstream anaerobic processes

Conference WEFTEC 2016 - 89th Water Environment Federation Annual Technical Exhibition and Conference · January 1, 2016 This study evaluates the membrane aerated biofilm reactor (MABR) for nitrogen removal following anaerobic treatment of domestic wastewater. The MABR has low-energy demands, a small footprint, and limited gaseous stripping. This study integrates a lab-scale ... Cite

Prospects for biological nitrogen removal from anaerobic effluents during mainstream wastewater treatment

Journal Article Environmental Science and Technology Letters · September 8, 2015 Growing interest in the anaerobic treatment of domestic wastewater requires a parallel focus on developing downstream technologies that address nitrogen pollution, especially for treatment systems located in eutrophication-impacted watersheds. Anaerobic ef ... Full text Cite

Nutrient removal from mainstream anaerobic processes using a membrane biofilm reactor and a granular sludge sequencing batch reactor

Conference 88th Annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference, WEFTEC 2015 · January 1, 2015 Mainstream anaerobic treatment provides low-energy wastewater treatment; however, for wide-scale adoption, nitrogen removal must be considered. Anaerobic effluents contain ammonia, volatile organics, methane, and sulfide which could be used to support nitr ... Full text Cite

Nutrient removal from mainstream anaerobic effluents: Linking biofilm modeling to experimental design

Conference 87th Annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference, WEFTEC 2014 · October 1, 2014 Full text Cite

Advancing the success of engineering service projects from the classroom to the field

Conference 86th Annual Water Environment Federation Technical Exhibition and Conference, WEFTEC 2013 · January 1, 2013 Full text Cite