Treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater containing β-lactams antibiotics by a pilot-scale anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR)

A 180 L anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) was operated for 253 days to treat real pharmaceutical wastewater, which mainly composed of beta-lactams antibiotics (BLAs) including amoxicillin, ceftriaxone, cefoperazone and ampicillin. The operation was divided into three stages with hydraulic retention time (HRT) of 48 h, 36 h and 24 h, respectively, the corresponding average organic loading rates (OLRs) and antibiotics loading rates (ALRs) increased from 2.37 +/- 0.28 to 4.46 +/- 0.87 kg-CODm(3).d(-1), and from 19.06 +/- 0.67 to 37.91 +/- 3.57 g-BLAsm(-3).d(-1), respectively. The highest removal efficiencies of amoxicillin, ceftriaxone, cefoperazone and ampicillin were 73.2 +/- 4.3%, 47.7 +/- 2.2%, 79.4 +/- 4.1% and 34.6 +/- 3.3%, respectively. The obtained total COD removal efficiency was as high as 94.0% and accompanied with VFA accumulation (249 +/- 25 to 375 +/- 61 mg.L-1) as well as biogas generation (0.195 +/- 0.017 to 0.291 +/- 0.032 L.gCOD(removal)(-1)), > 66% of which was methane (0.135 +/- 0.011 to 0.196 +/- 0.021 L.gCOD(removal)(-1)). Moreover, basing on the back propagation neural network (BPNN) theory, the mathematical models were developed and well calibrated for simulating the AnMBR performance in the biodegradation of COD and antibiotics.