Abstract
Increasing human activity, including commercial and noncommercial use of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and agricultural products, has introduced new contaminants that can be challenging to remove with currently available technologies. Pharmaceuticals, in particular, can be especially challenging to remove from the water supply and can pose great harm to people and local ecosystems. Their highly stable nature makes their degradation with conventional water treatment techniques difficult, and studies have shown that even advanced treatment of water is unable to remove some compounds. As such, decontamination of water from pharmaceuticals requires the development of advanced technologies capable of being used in indirect and direct potable water reuse. In this review, we discuss pharmaceutical removal in indirect potable water treatment and how recent advancements in adsorption and photocatalysis technologies can be used for the decontamination of pharmaceutical-based emerging contaminants. For instance, new materials that incorporate graphene-based nanomaterials have been developed and shown to have increased adsorptive capabilities toward pharmaceuticals when compared with unmodified graphene. In addition, adsorbents have been incorporated in membrane technologies, and photocatalysts have been combined with magnetic material and coated on optical fibers improving their usability in water treatment. Advancements in photocatalytic material research have enabled the development of highly effective materials capable of degradation of a variety of pharmaceutical compounds and the development of visible-light photocatalysts. To understand how adsorbents and photocatalysts can be utilized in water treatment, we address the benefits and limitations associated with these technologies and their potential applicability in indirect potable water reuse plants.
Highlights
Potable water can be considered the most important human need
We focus on emerging pharmaceutical contaminants (EPCs) because of their potential adverse effects to humans and the ecosystem (Table 1)
We focus on discussing the limitations of the material as well as the limitations of available research in determining whether these materials can be utilized in water treatment facilities to reduce EPCs released in the environment, which has not been previously discussed in other review articles
Summary
Potable water can be considered the most important human need. human activities have introduced dangerous contaminants in water systems requiring a multibarrier treatment approach to purify water for potable use. We focus on discussing the limitations of the material as well as the limitations of available research in determining whether these materials can be utilized in water treatment facilities to reduce EPCs released in the environment, which has not been previously discussed in other review articles Utilization of nanomaterials such as graphene and metal-based nanoparticles in water treatment has shown promise due to their superior adsorptive and photocatalytic properties enabling removal and breakdown of harmful EPCs. Figure 2 shows a pictorial representation of the adsorptive and photocatalytic removal of contaminants. An effective adsorbent must present a number of different properties such as being inert, biocompatible, resistant to mechanical forces, and needs to exhibit a high adsorption capacity to guarantee waste removal These features are npj Clean Water (2020) 1. High pressure UV, 160 W Visible light, >400 nm, 150 W Low-pressure UV, 254 nm, 40 W Solar, 300–400 nm (65 W/m2), 400–570 nm (1,844 W/m2)
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