Pharmaceutical and personal care products removal by advanced treatment technologies
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This thesis evaluates different technologies for treating wastewater with high concentrations of PPCPs.
Firstly, a state-of-art revision of advanced treatment technology for removing Triclosan (TCS) from waste water was carried out in an attempt to evaluate the most favourable technologies and discern any major limiting factors. The technological categories evaluated were: (i) adsorption, (ii) advanced oxidation processes, and (iii) membrane technology.
The results found in the second chapter are based on treating three PPCP compounds in a cyclic anoxic/aerobic membrane bioreactor. In fact, the target compounds selected for this study were specifically carbamazepine, caffeine and triclosan. The ultrafiltration membrane bioreactor process was an efficient and appropriate technology for chemical oxygen demand removal, as it achieved a removal average of 97%, removal rate for caffeine reaching up to 93.7 ± 9.7 and 89.7 ± 8.3 % for triclosan. In the case of carbamazepine, removal was lower (36.2 ± 6.8%) due to its recalcitrance. Low ammonia removal efficiencies were observed in both experimental systems suggesting that nitrification was inhibited by the presence of triclosan. The deterioration of sludge characteristics induced a fouling increment which forced several chemical cleanings to be carried out.
The last section is focused on cork and evaluates its potential as a sorbent material. The cork was firstly characterized to discern its structure. Then a fixed-bed column was chosen as the most suitable technology with which to evaluate the cork adsorption. Four pharmaceuticals (diclofenac, ketoprofen, naproxen and carbamazepine) and two cosmetic compounds (triclosan and methylparaben) were treated in wastewater effluent by using a fixed-bed column. Furthermore, a novel, simple, selective and low-cost method for the pre-concentration sample before chromatography was performed in real wastewater effluent. This methodology is based on a silicone rod micro extraction combined with HPLC-DAD to simultaneous determine the concentration levels of six compounds. The adsorption capacities of cork followed this order: TCS >CBZ and MPB> KET and NAP > DCF. This behaviour could be explained by the fact that the removal of PPCPs by cork is based on hydrophobicity and the charge of the PPCP molecules. Generally, the cork showed a much higher capacity for TCS sorption, minimizing the concentrations of triclosan and avoiding the inhibition effect into biological systems, as well as minimizing fouling in MBRs
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