scholarly journals Low removal of acidic and hydrophilic pharmaceutical products by various types of municipal wastewater treatment plants

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gagnon ◽  
André Lajeunesse

Pharmaceutical substances represent a risk for aquatic environments and their potential impacts on the receiving environment are poorly understood. Municipal effluents are important sources of contaminants including common pharmaceuticals like anti-inflammatory and anti-convulsive substances. The removal of pharmaceuticals, particularly those highly soluble can represent a great challenge to conventional wastewater treatment processes. Hydrophilic drugs (<em>e.g.</em> acidic drugs) have properties that can highly influence removal efficiencies of treatment plants. The performance of different wastewater treatment processes for the removal of specific pharmaceutical products that are expected to be poorly removed was investigated. The obtained results were compared to inherent properties of the studied substances. Clofibric acid, carbamazepine, diclofenac, ibuprofen and naproxen were largely found in physicochemical primary-treated effluents at concentrations ranging from 77 to 2384 ng/L. This treatment type showed removal yields lower than 30%. On the other hand, biological treatments with activated sludge under aerobic conditions resulted in much better removal rates (&gt;50% for 5 of the 8 studied substances). Interestingly, this latter type of process showed evidence of selectivity with respect to the size (R2=0.7388), solubility (R2=0.6812), and partitioning (R2=0.9999) of the removed substances; the smallest and least sorbed substances seemed to be removed at better rates, while the persistent carbamazepine (392 ng/L) and diclofenac (66 ng/L) were poorly removed (&lt;10%) after biological treatment. In the case of treatment by aerated lagoons, the most abundant substances were the highly soluble hydroxy-ibuprofen (350-3321 ng/L), followed by naproxen (42-413 n/L) and carbamazepine (254-386 ng/L). In order to assess the impacts of all these contaminants of various properties on the environment and human health, we need to better understand the chemical and physical transformations occurring at the treatment plant and in the receiving waters.

2014 ◽  
Vol 69 (7) ◽  
pp. 1359-1372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oskar Modin ◽  
David J. I. Gustavsson

Microbial bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) utilize living microorganisms to drive oxidation and reduction reactions at solid electrodes. BESs could potentially be used at municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to recover the energy content of organic matter, to produce chemicals useful at the site, or to monitor and control biological treatment processes. In this paper, we review bioelectrochemical technologies that could be applied for municipal wastewater treatment. Sjölunda WWTP in Malmö, Sweden, is used as an example to illustrate how the different technologies potentially could be integrated into an existing treatment plant and the impact they could have on the plant's utilization of energy and chemicals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
pp. 1988-1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yan He ◽  
Yishuang Zhu ◽  
Jinghan Chen ◽  
Minsheng Huang ◽  
Guohua Wang ◽  
...  

The tense deficiency of available land resources is becoming one of the bottlenecks in dealing with wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) management issues.


2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 387-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Reinholds ◽  
O. Muter ◽  
I. Pugajeva ◽  
J. Rusko ◽  
I. Perkons ◽  
...  

Pharmaceutical products (PPs) belong to emerging contaminants that may accumulate along with other chemical pollutants in wastewaters (WWs) entering industrial and/or urban wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In the present study, the technique of ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to Orbitrap high-resolution mass spectrometry (Orbitrap-HRMS) was applied for the analysis of 24 multi-class PPs in WW samples collected at different technological stages of Daugavgriva WWTP located in Riga, Latvia. Caffeine and acetaminophen levels in the range of 7,570–11,403 ng/L and 810–1,883 ng/L, respectively, were the predominant compounds among 19 PPs determined in the WW. The results indicate that aerobic digestion in biological ponds was insufficiently effective to degrade most of the PPs (reduction efficiency &lt;0–50.0%) with the exception of four PPs that showed degradation efficiency varying from 55.0 to 99.9%. Tests of short-term chemical and enzymatic hydrolysis for PP degradation in WW samples were performed, and the results reflected the complexity of different degradation mechanisms and physicochemical transformations of PPs. The toxicological studies of WW impact on Daphnia magna indicated gradual reduction of the total toxicity through the treatment stages at the WWTP.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin de Santiago ◽  
Terence A. Palmer ◽  
Michael S. Wetz ◽  
Jennifer Beseres Pollack

AbstractThe influence of nutrient loading and other anthropogenic stressors is thought to be greater in low inflow, microtidal estuaries, where there is limited water exchange. This 11-month study compared spatial changes in macrofaunal communities adjacent to regions that varied in land cover in Oso Bay, Texas, an estuarine secondary bay with inflow dominated by hypersaline discharge, in addition to discharge from multiple municipal wastewater treatment plants. Macrofauna communities changed in composition with distance away from a wastewater treatment plant in Oso Bay, with the western region of the bay containing different communities than the head and the inlet of the bay. Ostracods were numerically dominant close to the wastewater discharge point. Macrobenthic community composition is most highly correlated with silicate concentrations in the water column. Silicate is negatively correlated with salinity and dissolved oxygen, and positively correlated with nutrients within the bay. Results are relevant for environmental management purposes by demonstrating that point-source discharges can still have ecological effects in hydrologically altered estuaries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 00113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Józef Trela ◽  
Elżbieta Płaza

The article presents new trends in the treatment of municipal wastewater in Sweden caused by the constantly increasing requirements for discharging pollutants into Baltic Sea waters. The development of new technologies for nitrogen removal, pharmaceutical residues removal and the possibility of using membrane processes in wastewater treatment is presented. The state of research on innovative wastewater treatment processes at the level of pilot-scale tests and their implementation in full technical scale has been described. These technologies can allow the application of new, economical and environmentally friendly wastewater treatment processes based on biological, chemical and physical methods. Swedish wastewater treatment plants are preparing to meet the new conditions required for discharged wastewater with a value of 6 mg N/L for total nitrogen and 0.2 mg P/L for total phosphorus. This requires large investments in the reconstruction of municipal wastewater treatment plants and the introduction of new treatment processes.


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