Effective organics degradation from pharmaceutical wastewater by an integrated process including membrane bioreactor and ozonation.
The enhanced removal of organic compounds from a pharmaceutical wastewater resulting from the production of an anti-viral drug (acyclovir) was obtained by employing a membrane bioreactor (MBR) and an ozonation system. An integrated MBR-ozonation system was set-up by placing the ozonation reactor in the recirculation stream of the MBR effluent. A conventional treatment set-up (ozonation as polishing step after MBR) was also used as a reference. The biological treatment alone reached an average COD removal of 99%, which remained unvaried when the ozonation step was introduced. An acyclovir removal of 99% was also obtained with the MBR step and the ozonation allowed to further remove 99% of the residual concentration in the MBR effluent. For several of the 28 organics identified in the wastewater the efficiency of the MBR treatment improved from 20% to 60% as soon as the ozonation was placed in the recirculation stream. The benefit of the integrated system, with respect to the conventional treatment set-up was evident for the removal of a specific ozonation by-product. The latter was efficiently removed in the integrated system, being its abundance in the final effluent 20-fold lower than what obtained when ozonation was used as a polishing step. In addition, if the conventional treatment configuration is employed, the same performance of the integrated system in terms of by-product removal can only be obtained when the ozonation is operated for longer than 60 min. This demonstrates the effectiveness of the integrated system compared to the conventional polishing configuration.
Mascolo
G
G
Istituto di Ricerca Sulle Acque, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Viale F. De Blasio 5, Bari, Italy. giuseppe.mascolo@ba.irsa.cnr.it
Laera
G
G
Pollice
A
A
Cassano
D
D
Pinto
A
A
Salerno
C
C
Lopez
A
A
D000212:Acyclovir / Q000378:metabolism; D000998:Antiviral Agents / Q000378:metabolism; D001673:Biodegradation, Environmental; D019149:Bioreactors / Q000382:microbiology*; D009930:Organic Chemicals / Q000378:metabolism*; D010126:Ozone / Q000737:chemistry*; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism*; D014865:Waste Disposal, Fluid
D000998:Antiviral Agents; D009930:Organic Chemicals; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D010126:Ozone; D000212:Acyclovir