WELCOME

TREATMENT OF PHARMACUTICAL EMERGING

CANTAMINANTS

Presented By Guided By
Anusha Vinu Renu Miss
 CONTENTS
• Introduction
• Emerging contaminants
• Global detection of pharmaceuticals
• Effects of pharmaceuticals on environmental and ecosystem
• Treatment methods
o Membrane technology
o Nano filtration
o Reverse osmosis
o Forward osmosis
o Advanced oxidation process
o Photolysis
o Ozonation
o Fentons process
o Adsorption technology
• Conclusion
 INTRODUCTION
• Emerging contaminants are chemicals that have been detected at trace
levels in global drinking water.
• Pharmaceuticals, personal care items, insecticides, herbicides and
hormone disrupting chemicals are among them.
• The presence of these contaminants even at minimal levels can cause
harmful effect to human health.
• Traditional waste treatment techniques are ineffective in removing
organic pollutants from waste water.
• The treatment includes membrane technology, absorption technology,
advanced oxidation process and biological process.
 Emerging contaminants

• Pharmaceutical contaminants
• Pharmaceuticals are the wide varieties of biological compounds that are used
for the treatment of infection and diseases.
• Commonly used pharmaceuticals are
Amoxilin
Ampicilin
Aspirin
Cetirizine
Antipyretic,analgesic
Penicilin ,etc
Pathways To The Environment
 Global detection of pharmaceuticals

• Diagnostic techniques for detection of PCs in waste water

 Liquid chromatography
Gas chromatography
Fourier transformation near-infrared (FT-NIR)
 Effects of pharmaceuticals on environmental and ecosystem

• Pharmaceutical drugs play an important role in the treatment and

prevention of diseases in human and animals.
• The rising concentration of pharmaceutical residues have lead to
unpredictable changes in the ecosystem.
• The sewage sludge/manure being used as fertilizers in the crop fields
may also contaminate the ground water with pharmaceuticals.
Eco-toxic effects of PCs on microbial communities
• Microorganisms plays a key role in functioning of our ecosystem.
• They are the mediators for debris-based food web.
• Biodegradation is an essential process for eliminating contaminants.

Environmental effects of pharmaceuticals on human health

• High concentration of pharmaceutical residue in the environment are
always concerning to the human health.
• Different factors affecting human health are
o Concentration
o Type
o Distribution of drugs
o Metabolism or degradation process
o Drug overdoses.
 Treatment methods

Membrane technology
• Traditional waste treatments methods were not designed to remove
new pollutants and were thus more ineffective.
• As a result advanced treatment procedures such as ozonation,
enhanced oxidation, activated carbon adsorption, and membrane
separation are used by the industry.
• For removing pollutants high pressure membrane technologies
including nono filtration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) are
frequently used.
 Treatment methods

• Forward osmosis (FO), membrane distillation (MD) and membrane

electro dialysis are other membrane technologies.
• The factors influencing the membrane are:
 Charge of the molecules
 Hydrophobicity of the molecule
 Size of the separated molecule
 Nano filtration

• Pharmaceutical Nano filtration has removed more than 90% of

pharmaceuticals from water and waste water.
• Numerous process occurs at the same time.
• Adsorption, electrostatic effect and steric hindrance are all involved at
the same time.
• Negatively charged medicines have better rejection efficiency than
natural drugs.
• Nano filtration delivers coarser filtration than reverse osmosis.
• It has an ability to remove particles as small as 0.002 to 0.005
micrometer diameter particles.
• It is used to:
 Concentrate and demineralize valuable by products, such as metals from
waste water
 Generate potable drinking water
 Remove pesticides from ground or surface water
 Soften water
Reverse osmosis
• Reverse osmosis is a diffusion process
that uses a selective semipermeable
membrane under pressure to remove
ions and big molecules.
• Membrane characteristics, membrane
type, mechanical resistance, porosity,
and chemical composition all play a
role in reverse osmosis.
• Larger amount of dissolved solids are
removed from aqueous solution using
reverse osmosis.
Forward osmosis
• Forward osmosis is an osmotically
based procedure.
• FO uses a semi-permeable membrane
to separate water from dissolved
solutes, similar to RO.
• FO has been studied extensively for
water and wastewater treatment in
recent years.
• In most situations, FO is employed as
an advanced pre-treatment for
downstream processes such as RO and
thermal distillation.
 Advanced oxidation process (AOP)

• Advanced oxidation process refers to a set of oxidative water

treatment.
• It can be used to treat toxic effluents at industrial level, hospitals and
waste water treatment plants.
• AOPs are successful to transform toxic organic compounds in to
biodegradable substance.
• In general these are cheap to install but involve high operating cost.
• To limit the cost AOPs are often used as pre-treatment combined with
biologic treatment.
 Photolysis
• Photolysis is the decomposition in the presence of artificial or natural
light.
• Two classes of photolytic transformations, indirect and direct
photolysis processes, were introduced.
• In direct photolysis, an organic compound directly absorbs UV light
and undergoes decomposition.
• Indirect photolysis involves the formation of reactive excited states,
radicals, etc. by photosensitization or with the help of catalysts.
• This is followed by chemical reactions causing decomposition.
• Indirect photolysis or photo catalysis is necessary to achieve photo
degradation of many pharmaceuticals.
 Ozonation

• Ozone is a strong oxidizing agent, capable of acting both directly or

indirectly.
• The direct use of ozone without any catalyst is ozonation, while
additional use of a catalyst or photo activation is considered an AOP.
• Ozone is electrophilic and reacts with nucleophilic and electron rich
molecules.
• Direct ozonation occurs with compounds having carbon–carbon
double or triple bonds, aromatic groups, or at certain oxygen, nitrogen,
phosphorus, or sulfur functions.
• Hydroxyl radical formation takes place when ozone and hydroxide
anions react in water.
• Ozonation and chlorination processes are the most widely used
oxidation treatments to remove pharmaceuticals from water and
wastewater.
• Ozone proved more effective than chlorine dioxide for degrading a wide
range of pharmaceuticals.
• The average ozonation process removes >90% of pharmaceuticals.
 Fentons process

• Fenton’s reagent was developed in the 1890s.

• It is a strong oxidizing agent composed of ferrous ions and hydrogen
peroxide in solution, and it can work in both heterogeneous and
homogeneous conditions.
• In heterogeneous conditions, reactions occur with the catalyst
immobilized on a heterogeneous matrix.
• Oxidation is driven by hydroxyl radical generation.
• Once formed, hydroxyl radicals degrade the pharmaceuticals.
• Generation of hydroxyl radicals explains that the process efficiency
is closely related to the solution pH.
 Adsorption technology
• Adsorption is a process which involves the mass transfer of substances
between two phases, namely liquid-liquid, liquid-solid, gas-liquid, or
gas-solid interface.
• Adsorbents are used to adsorb any particular pollutant from
wastewater with the help of intermolecular forces.
• There are two types of interaction between the solid surface and
adsorbents, namely physisorption and chemisorption.
• If the interaction has a weak physical nature such as van der Waals
forces is called physisorption.
• chemisorption involves the chemical bonding between solid surface
and adsorbents.
 Conclusion
• Pharmaceuticals have long been present in the environment, but their
detection and hazardous effects have only emerged in the past 2−3
decades.
• No global legal maximum environmental concentrations exist for
pharmaceutically active compounds.
• Primary and secondary WWTP treatments generally are unable to
remove these pollutants, leading to their migration into drinking water
supplies.
• Thus, advanced and effective tertiary treatment processes are
increasingly needed as population increases and per capita drug
use rises.
• AOPs and adsorption can effectively remove pharmaceuticals from
water and wastewaters.
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