Removal of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) from Municipal Waste Water with Integrated Membrane Systems, MBR-RO/NF

Yonggang Wang, Xu Wang, Mingwei Li, Jing Dong, Changhong Sun and Guanyi Chen
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Yonggang Wang: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, No. 92, Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300072, China
Xu Wang: Beijing Municipal Research Academy of Environmental Protection, No. 59, Beiyingfang Middle Street, Xicheng District, Beijing 100037, China
Mingwei Li: Beijing Municipal Research Academy of Environmental Protection, No. 59, Beiyingfang Middle Street, Xicheng District, Beijing 100037, China
Jing Dong: Beijing Municipal Research Academy of Environmental Protection, No. 59, Beiyingfang Middle Street, Xicheng District, Beijing 100037, China
Changhong Sun: Beijing Municipal Research Academy of Environmental Protection, No. 59, Beiyingfang Middle Street, Xicheng District, Beijing 100037, China
Guanyi Chen: School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, No. 92, Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300072, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-12

Abstract: This study focuses on the application of combining membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment with reverse osmosis (RO) or nanofiltration (NF) membrane treatment for removal of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in municipal wastewater. Twenty-seven PPCPs were measured in real influent with lowest average concentration being trimethoprim (7.12 ng/L) and the highest being caffeine (18.4 ng/L). The results suggest that the MBR system effectively removes the PPCPs with an efficiency of between 41.08% and 95.41%, and that the integrated membrane systems, MBR-RO/NF, can achieve even higher removal rates of above 95% for most of them. The results also suggest that, due to the differences in removal mechanisms of NF/RO membrane, differences of removal rates exist. In this study, the combination of MBR-NF resulted in the removal of 13 compounds to below detection limits and MBR-RO achieved even better results with removal of 20 compounds to below detection limits.

Keywords: PPCPs; wastewater; membrane bioreactor; reverse osmosis; nanofiltration; removal mechanisms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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