Pharmaceuticals of emerging concern in hospital wastewater: removal of Ibuprofen and Ofloxacin drugs using MBBR method

Hospital wastewater (HWW) is one of the largest sources of pharmaceutical release. The present paper proposes the sustainable and controllable hospital wastewater treatment method based on the photo-Fenton process using MnO2 and moving bed biofilm reactor (MBBR) treatment followed by ozonation process. The method has satisfactory removal rates of Ibuprofen and Ofloxacin>90%. Evaluation of the optimum operational parameters such as hydraulic retention time (HRT), mixed liquor suspended solids (MLSS), ozone consumption (OC), time of ozone exposure (TOE), manganese oxide (MnO2) concentration (MOC) was carried out. It was established that the optimal performance occurred at following conditions - HRT (16-20 hours), MLSS (2500-3500 mg/L), OC (7-9 L/hrs), TOE (4-10 min) and MOC (1.9-2.7 mg/L). It is proposed for practical application to control the HWW in two stages. The first stage includes preliminary tests for evaluation of optimum MOC. The second stage is based on continuous evaluation of HRT and TOE using analytical modelling functions.

Automated summary

This paper proposes a sustainable and controllable method for hospital wastewater treatment using the photo-Fenton process, MBBR treatment, and ozonation. The optimal operational parameters were evaluated and satisfactory removal rates of pharmaceuticals in hospital wastewater were achieved. The method is suggested to be implemented in two stages for practical application.