Abstract
The purpose of this review work is to give an overview of the research reported on bioprocesses for the treatment of domestic or industrial wastewaters (WW) containing pharmaceuticals. Conventional WW treatment technologies are not efficient enough to completely remove all pharmaceuticals from water. Indeed, these compounds are becoming an actual public health problem, because they are more and more present in underground and even in potable waters. Different types of bioprocesses are described in this work: from classical activated sludge systems, which allow the depletion of pharmaceuticals by bio-degradation and adsorption, to enzymatic reactions, which are more focused on the treatment of WW containing a relatively high content of pharmaceuticals and less organic carbon pollution than classical WW. Different aspects concerning the advantages of membrane bioreactors for pharmaceuticals removal are discussed, as well as the more recent studies on enzymatic membrane reactors to the depletion of these recalcitrant compounds.
Highlights
Pharmaceutical compounds have been continuously released in the environment since their first applications for human or veterinarian purposes at the end of the 19th century
Enzymatic Reactor Coupled to a Membrane Unit. In such Enzymatic Membrane Reactors (EMRs) called stirred-tank membrane reactors (STMRs), the substrate is continuously fed into the reactor, where enzymes have been previously added to the reaction medium
We reported in this review the most recent works related to the degradation of recalcitrant pharmaceuticals present in domestic or industrial wastewaters
Summary
Pharmaceutical compounds have been continuously released in the environment since their first applications for human or veterinarian purposes at the end of the 19th century. As far as these being relatively diluted in wastewaters, only the development of sensible-enough analytical methods has opened up the possibility to identify and monitor them in water effluents In the past, they have not been considered as priority pollutants to target. Industrial wastewaters that come from pharmaceutical production present the highest pollutant content (between 10−1 and 104 μg·L−1), whereas surprisingly, raw surface waters from rivers, lakes and ponds present a relatively high content (between 10−4 and 103 μg·L−1) of some pollutants, like tetracycline, a well-known antibiotic. The results reported for tetracycline are relatively high among the different pollutants reported, this antibiotic is well known for its self-degradation initiated by solar radiation [16] This result is a good indication of the very extensive use of this pharmaceutical
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