Carbamazepine and oxcarbazepine removal in pharmaceutical wastewater treatment plant using a mass balance approach: A case study

Autor: Vishwas Pratape, Ram Avtar Pandey, Amruta Morone, Tapan Chakrabarti, Kshitiz Dwivedi
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering. 34:2662-2671
ISSN: 1975-7220
0256-1115
DOI: 10.1007/s11814-017-0190-2
Popis: The manufacturing of the antiepileptics, carbamazepine (CBZ) and oxcarbazepine (oxCBZ), results in generation of wastewater containing these micropollutants which exhibit toxicity even at trace levels. Therefore, we focused on monitoring their fate and removal in various units of a full-scale wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) using mass balance approach. An apparent CBZ removal of 50±3% was observed by conventional activated sludge process in the biological treatment unit, whereas oxCBZ still persisted after the biological treatment and showed negative mass balance. However, reverse osmosis resulted in 91% oxCBZ removal, whereas CBZ still continued to persist as a result of lower solubility of CBZ as compared to oxCBZ. Only 3% CBZ exhibited sorption onto the suspended solids and sludge, which was negligible for oxCBZ, thus demonstrating their tendency to remain in aqueous phase. Additionally, we attempted to understand the fundamental mechanism behind the removal of these pharmaceuticals and it was apparently the collective effect of sorption, mineralization, biotransformation, biodegradation, phototransformation/photodegradation, etc. Thus, the integrative data presented in the present study on productivity of these pharmaceuticals, their mass loading in influent and effluents allied with their removal efficiency will be significantly constructive in benchmarking the operational effectiveness through operational optimization and design improvement of the current conventional treatment plant.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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