Research Progress on Pollution Characteristics, Degradation, and Transformation of Typical PPCPs in the Process of Wastewater Treatment

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have received extensive attention as a new type of pollutant inin the 21st century, and the ecological and health risks caused by PPCPs have gradually been recognized by government regulatory agencies. Daily use of PPCPs has led to their frequent detection and high concentrations in the influent, effluent, and sludge of wastewater treatment plants, but traditional wastewater treatment processes can't remove them effectively. Most research about enhancing the removal of PPCPs through microbial degradation, photodegradation, and ozonation is still in the laboratory research stage, and the removal effects are not satisfactory when applied to actual sewage treatment. Therefore, the effective removal of PPCPs from domestic wastewater is a critical technical problem that urgently needs to be studied and solved in the coming years. At present, many scholars do not have a comprehensive understanding about the degradation and transformation behaviors of microbes, ultraviolet, and ozone for typical PPCPs in the wastewater treatment process, so it is necessary to conduct a systematic analysis and discussion. In this study, 16 typical PPCPs frequently detected in sewage treatment plants were selected as research objects through a literature review. The occurrence, removal characteristics, and sludge adsorption properties of typical PPCPs in wastewater treatment plants were analyzed and summarized. The degradation and transformation behavior of typical PPCPs under microbial, ultraviolet, and ozone treatments in the wastewater treatment process were also discussed. Finally, based on current research gaps, some research directions for the removal and transformation of PPCPs in wastewater were proposed:① investigation into the removal characteristics of PPCPs by actual biochemical treatment; ② study on the mechanism of microbial degradation and transformation of typical PPCPs during biochemical treatment; ③ study on the degradation and transformation mechanism of typical PPCPs by UV/ozone in an actual sewage system; and ④ research on the application technology of removing PPCPs from sewage via microbial degradation, photodegradation, ozone oxidation, etc. The relevant results of this study can provide a reference for the pollution control of typical PPCPs in the sewage treatment process.