A-317-2 Aquatic Environmental Chemistry

To give students:

1. Insight into the inorganic and organic chemical processes of aquatic systems
2. Knowledge about how environmental problems related to aquatic systems can be quantified (calculated)
3. Detailed knowledge about the methods available for predicting the fate of chemical substances in an aquatic environment
4. Basic understanding of the formation and chemical composition of main types of aquatic systems.

The prerequisites necessary for starting a programme of graduate studies in environmental chemistry.

The course covers the following topics:

Aquatic environmental issues:

• The geochemical processes underlying the formation of lakes, seas and running water and chemical composition of these waters.
• The carbonate chemistry and how it governs pH in natural waters.

• Overview of typical pollutants in water and sediment matrices.
• Partitioning of pollutants from water to living media (bioconcentration and biomagnification).
• Complex organic and inorganic processes in aquatic environments.
• Metal solubility, complexation and speciation of in aquatic environments.
• Redox chemistry in aqueous systems.

• Abiotic and biotic transformation processes of organic chemicals in aquatic systems such as hydrolysis, photolysis and biotransformation.
• Transformation pathways, formation of transformation products and models to quantify transformation kinetics.
• System analysis and mass balance modelling of pollutants in aquatic systems such as lakes and rivers.

Health science aspects:

Human health and drinking water quality

• Arsenic in drinking waters
• Pollution of drinking waters in 3^rd world countries
• Pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other xenobiotic residues in drinking water in Europe and health consequences hereof

Human health and water pollution

• Water borne diseases caused by microbes in 3^rd world country

Some topics will be taught together with the course in Terrestrial Environmental Chemistry (LIFE-KU) running in the same block (module C). This mainly comprise lectures and exercises on water and soil pollution, biodegradation kinetics/pathways, metal speciation, equilibrium computation and redox processes.

Lectures, theoretical exercises and 1-2 case studies (practical laboratory exercises) and project work will be the main form of teaching. Lectures are based on a textbook, lecture notes and scientific papers. The topics of the theoretical exercises run in parallel with the topics treated in the lectures. The case studies focus on selected chemicals and draw on the general insight in chemical and biological processes (such as hydrolysis, photolysis and biotranformation) that are fundamentally important for aquatic environmental chemistry. Groups of students (3-4 students) work together to discuss the case studies, plan and carry out laboratory exercises to determine transformation kinetics. Results are presented in laboratory reports.

The project work focus on describing contemporary examples of water and soil pollution and the technologies used to clean soil and waters. The projects draw on the general insight in chemical, biological and physical processes presented in this course. Each project is solved by groups of students and it is presented as a report (in EPA format) and an oral presentation. The project work is common for both this course and the course in Terrestrial Environmental Chemistry (LIFE-KU). However, students can fulfill the project work also in case they do not follow both courses.

The main objectives of the course are to obtain in-depth understanding of the chemical, geochemical and biochemical processes occurring in aquatic environments and to be able quantify the importance of the different processes.

Knowledge:

• Summarise the processes and factors governing the chemical composition of clean water versus polluted water
• Classify and show an overview of the main inorganic and organic pollutants in aquatic ecosystems.
• Summarise pollutants and microbes present in drinking water and/or surface water which are important for human health
• Demonstrate a solid knowledge about the processes significant for environmental problems in aquatic systems, including the kinetics of such processes.
• Identify human health problems related to polluted water and drinking water both in 3rd world countries and in our part of the world.
• Show an overview of the methods available for predicting the fate of chemical substances in an aquatic environment.

Skills

• Apply and demonstrate the use of general principles from chemistry, physics and microbiology in environmental chemistry.
• Work in a laboratory with selected experimental techniques and procedures in transformation studies of pollutants.
• Quantify partitioning of pollutants into living media
• Apply kinetic modelling to quantify the transformation of pollutants
• Apply modelling concepts to quantify the fate of pollutants in lake and river systems containing sediment and water.
• Communicate aquatic environmental issues in an oral presentation and in writing.

Competences

• Quantify the distribution of chemical substances in aquatic environments including exchange to sediment and air, transformation etc.
• Compute simple mass balances of different aquatic compartments.
• Corporate with fellow students about carrying out and reporting laboratory experiments.
• Integrate principles from chemistry, physics, biology, and ecology with mass and energy balances to develop and solve simple environmental questions.
• Apply simplified assumptions and estimate model and design parameters in the face of biological variability and uncertainty in measurement and prediction.

Kristine A. Krogh, The Department of Pharmaceutics and Analytical Chemistry (principal responsible)

Bent Halling-Sørensen, The Department of Pharmaceutics and Analytical Chemistry

Erland Björklund, The Department of Pharmaceutics and Analytical Chemistry