Accounting for SARS-CoV-2 adsorption on solids suspended in wastewater is a necessary step towards the reliable estimation of virus shedding rate in a sewerage system, based on measurements performed at a terminal collection station, i.e., at the entrance of a wastewater treatment plant. This concept is extended herein to include several measurement stations across a city to enable the estimation of spatial distribution of virus shedding rate. This study presents a pioneer general model describing the most relevant physicochemical phenomena with a special effort to reduce the complicated algebra. This is performed both in the topology regime, introducing a discrete-continuous approach, and in the domain of independent variables, introducing a monodisperse moment method to reduce the dimensionality of the resulting population balance equations. The resulting simplified model consists of a large system of ordinary differential equations. A sensitivity analysis is performed with respect to some key parameters for a single pipe topology. Specific numerical techniques are employed for the integration of the model. Finally, a parametric case study for an indicative—yet realistic—sewerage piping system is performed to show how the model is applied to SARS-CoV-2 adsorption on wastewater solids in the presence of other competing species. This is the first model of this kind appearing in scientific literature and a first step towards setting up an inverse problem to assess the spatial distribution of virus shedding rate based on its concentration in wastewater.
【저자키워드】 SARS-CoV-2, wastewater epidemiology, modeling, Adsorption, Virus concentration rationalization, Sewerage network, 【초록키워드】 Treatment, virus, sensitivity analysis, distribution, Concentration, independent variables, domain, effort, Specific, Topology, parameter, approach, accounting, resulting, performed, include, applied, reduce, competing, physicochemical, 【제목키워드】 sensitivity analysis, mathematical,