INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTIONS FOR REMOVAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL CONTAMINANTS FROM WATER SOURCES

Abstract

The waste derived from pharmaceutical products represent a huge worldwide problem. The aim of this paper is to describe, analyze and compare some depollution procedures for such kind of contaminants and to highlight their advantages and disadvantages from various points of view in order to propose concrete cleaning solutions. Classical methods used for contaminant removal from wastewaters in wastewater treatment plants (WTP) and from drinkable water in treatment plants (TP) do not satisfactorily reduce the content of pharmaceutical pollutants (PhP). After an extended analysis of many factors which can be involved in the treatment efficiency, this paper proposes some rehabilitation solutions for existent TP and WTP by adding to the conventional technologies, some operations of advanced treatment. These advanced operations are filtration through semipermeable membranes, i.e., microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), nanofiltration (NF), reverse osmosis (RO), advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), i.e., ozonation, H2O2, adsorption on activated carbon (AC). Statistical procedures are applied to compare these removal methods for such type of pollutants and to prove their efficacy. In this context, it is demonstrated that multivariate statistical techniques, combined with water quality indices represent a viable combination to perform accurate monitoring and spatiotemporal analysis of water quality assessment. This work presents concrete solutions for TP rehabilitation in order to comply with regulations in force related to PhP.