Removal of pharmaceutical contaminants through membrane bioreactor

Abstract

One of the most basic life needs is water, being utilized in our consistent daily needs for example; drinking, washing, cooking, and so forth. The rapid growth of the population and economy around the world gives rise to the demand for sanitary water. Water is polluted by industry, residential, and agricultural waste streams. Pharmaceutical contaminants have been emerging in water bodies with different types of groups. This contaminant can be treated by conventional techniques such as; chlorination, activated carbon, etc. A membrane bioreactor is a combination of a membrane process like ultra-filtration or Nano-filtration with an activated sludge process. It can be equipped with external devices such as an external loop airlift membrane has proven to remove 100 % of acetaminophen within 24 h. It can also be equipped with reverse osmosis and nano-filtration membrane where it has proven to remove around 20 and 13 contaminants respectively with > 90 % removal efficiency. In addition, increasing some factors such as sludge retention time has shown significant removal efficiency while enhancing the performance of the bioreactor. The advantage of MBR over conventional treatment techniques is that it has greater removal efficiency, a small footprint, better process control, and low sludge production. This article reviews some methods used to remove pharmaceutical contaminants from wastewater using a membrane bioreactor.