Long-term continuous treatment of non-sterile real hospital wastewater by Trametes versicolor

Josep Anton Mir-Tutusaus,Montserrat Sarrà,Sara Rodríguez-Mozaz,Damià Barceló,Eloi Parladé,Maira Martínez-Alonso,Núria Gaju,Marta Villagrasa,Glòria Caminal

doi:10.1186/s13036-019-0179-y

Abstract

BackgroundHospital wastewater is commonly polluted with high loads of pharmaceutically active compounds, which pass through wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and end up in water bodies, posing ecological and health risks. White-rot fungal treatments can cope with the elimination of a wide variety of micropollutants while remaining ecologically and economically attractive. Unfortunately, bacterial contamination has impeded so far a successful implementation of fungal treatment for real applications.ResultsThis work embodied a 91-day long-term robust continuous fungal operation treating real non-sterile hospital wastewater in an air pulsed fluidized bed bioreactor retaining the biomass. The hydraulic retention time was 3 days and the ageing of the biomass was avoided through partial periodic biomass renovation resulting in a cellular retention time of 21 days. Evolution of microbial community and Trametes abundance were evaluated.ConclusionsThe operation was able to maintain an average pharmaceutical load removal of over 70% while keeping the white-rot fungus active and predominant through the operation.

Highlights

Hospital wastewater is commonly polluted with high loads of pharmaceutically active compounds, which pass through wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and end up in water bodies, posing ecological and health risks
Pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) occurrence in water bodies remains an issue of environmental concern despite persistent efforts of the scientific and global community to cope with the problem
The PhACs concentration before and after the coagulation-flocculation pretreatment of the Hospital wastewater (HWW) are summarized in Additional file 1: Table S2

Summary

Introduction

Hospital wastewater is commonly polluted with high loads of pharmaceutically active compounds, which pass through wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and end up in water bodies, posing ecological and health risks. White-rot fungal treatments can cope with the elimination of a wide variety of micropollutants while remaining ecologically and economically attractive. HWW is usually discharged untreated to the sewer Removing such micropollutants from water streams is not trivial, many advances have been achieved in that direction. While many studies have dealt with the degradation of single pollutants, real streams have mixtures of several contaminants, a robust process should be capable of coping with the removal of most micropollutants. Amongst the biological oxidation processes, white-rot fungi (WRF) have proved to be especially well-suited for removing and degrading a wide range of pharmaceuticals [6, 7]. A fungal system has been regarded as a feasible approach for

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Conclusion