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When attempting to compute unsteady, variable density flows at very small or zero Mach number using a standard finite volume compressible flow solver one faces at least the following difficulties: (i) Spatial pressure variations vanish as the Mach number $M \rightarrow 0$, but they do affect the velocity field at leading order; (ii) the resulting spatial homogeneity of the leading order pressure implies an elliptic divergence constraint for the energy flux; (iii) violation of this constraint would crucially affect the transport of mass, thereby disabling a code to properly advect even a constant density distribution. A previous companion paper derived the above observations from a single time - multiple length scale asymptotic analysis for $M \ll 1$, applied to the conservation form of the governing equations and assuming an ideal gas with constant specific heats. The paper then restricted to weakly compressible one-dimensional flows and introduced a semi-implicit extension of a compressible flow solver, designed to handle the interaction of long wavelength acoustics with small scale, large amplitude density fluctuations. In the present paper we concentrate on the limit of zero Mach number for multi-dimensional, variable density flows. The construction of numerical fluxes for all conserved quantities involves: An explicit upwind step (1) yielding predictions for the nonlinear convective flux components. This procedure still neglects the influence of pressure gradients on the convective fluxes during the time step. Suitable corrections are applied in step (2), which guarantees compliance of the convective fluxes with the divergence constraint. This step requires the solution of a Poisson-type equation to obtain the relevant pressure gradients. Step (3), which requires the solution of a second Poisson-type equation, yields the yet unknown (non-convective) pressure contribution to the total flux of momentum. The final, cell centered velocity field exactly satisfies a discrete divergence constraint consistent with the asymptotic limit. Notice that step (1) can be done by any standard finite volume compressible flow solver and that the input to steps (2) and (3) involves solely the fluxes from step (1), but is independent on how these were obtained. Thus, we claim that our approach allows any such solver to be extended to simulate incompressible flows. Extensions to the weakly compressible regime $0 < M \ll 1$, reactive flows and more complex equations of state will be addressed in follow-up publications.
The assessment of water quality is crucial for safeguarding drinking water resources and ecosystem integrity. To this end, sample preparation and extraction is critically important, especially when investigating emerging contaminants and the toxicity of water samples. As extraction methods are rarely optimised for bioassays but rather adopted from chemical analysis, this may result in a misrepresentation of the actual toxicity.
In this study, surface water, groundwater, hospital and municipal wastewater were used to characterise the impacts of common sample preparation techniques (acidification, filtration and solid phase extraction (SPE)) on the outcomes of eleven in vitro bioassays. The latter covered endocrine activity (reporter gene assays for estrogen, androgen, aryl-hydrocarbon, retinoic acid, retinoid X, vitamin D, thyroid receptor), mutagenicity (Ames fluctuation test), genotoxicity (umu test) and cytotoxicity. Water samples extracted using different SPE sorbents (Oasis HLB, Supelco ENVI-Carb+, Telos C18/ENV) at acidic and neutral pH were compared for their performance in recovering biological effects.
Acidification, commonly used for stabilisation, significantly altered the endocrine activity and toxicity of most (waste)water samples. Sample filtration did not affect the majority of endpoints but in certain cases affected the (anti-)estrogenic and dioxin-like activities. SPE extracts (10.4 × final concentration), including WWTP effluents, induced significant endocrine effects that were not detected in aqueous samples (0.63 × final concentration), such as estrogenic, (anti-)androgenic and dioxin-like activities. When ranking the SPE methods using multivariate Pareto optimisation an extraction with Telos C18/ENV at pH 7 was most effective in recovering toxicity. At the same time, these extracts were highly cytotoxic masking the endpoint under investigation. Compared to that, extraction at pH 2.5 enriched less cytotoxicity.
In summary, our study demonstrates that sample preparation and extraction critically affect the outcome of bioassays when assessing the toxicity of water samples. Depending on the water matrix and the bioassay, these methods need to be optimised to accurately assess water quality.