Journal
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH
Volume 28, Issue 19, Pages 23778-23790Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s11356-020-11399-3
Keywords
Biological treatment; Advanced oxidative process; Post-treatment; Pharmaceutical compounds; Synthetic sewage; Risk assessment; Responsible Editor; Ta Yeong Wu
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Funding
- Coordenacao de Aperfeicoamento de Pessoal de Nivel Superior (CAPES)
- Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (CNPq)
- Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG)
- Fundacao Coordenacao de Projetos, Pesquisas e Estudos Tecnologicos (COPPETEC)
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The study demonstrated that ozonation is efficient in degrading drugs and removing micropollutants, showing great potential for application in improving water quality and reducing environmental and human health risks.
Conventional sewage treatment systems are generally not designed to remove micropollutants, requiring the development of new technologies, such as the combination of biological processes with advanced oxidative processes. The configuration of an anaerobic expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactor stands out for its use of granular biomass and high sludge bed expansion. Ozonation is an advanced oxidative process that stands out as one of the most promising technologies for the degradation of micropollutants. Thus, the present work aimed to evaluate the removal of drugs through the application of ozonation as a polishing process for the effluent of an EGSB reactor that was fed with synthetic sewage. Ozonation was shown to be efficient in the degradation of these compounds, reaching removals above 90%. It was found that the degradation profile of each drug varied according to its chemical structure since some drugs are more susceptible to oxidation than others and since the concentrations of pharmaceuticals are also related to their removal. Moreover, the assessment of risks to the environment and human health confirmed the need to assess the best scenario for risk reduction considering all drugs, since even with almost complete removal of some compounds, the effluents still showed toxicity. Thus, the high removal efficiencies found for the evaluated micropollutants showed that this technique has the potential to be used to improve the quality of biological reactor effluents or even to be combined in effluent reuse systems.
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