Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA.
Department of Chemistry, Ball State University, Muncie, IN, USA.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2019 Mar;26(7):6301-6310. doi: 10.1007/s11356-019-04170-w. Epub 2019 Jan 21.
Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have been identified as "hot spots" of antibiotics release to the environment. Treatment operations at WWTPs may remove a significant proportion of antibiotics from influent wastewater; however, the effects of tertiary treatment processes on antibiotics removal are not well understood. The objective of this review is to summarize the current literature regarding antibiotics removal from common tertiary processes at full-scale municipal WWTPs and to reveal the research gaps and inform future research directions. Chlorination, ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, and sand filtration were reviewed due to their popularity of application in the USA. The majority of studies of antibiotics removal via tertiary wastewater treatment have been conducted in EU nations, the USA, Australia, and China. Chlorination significantly reduces antibiotics concentrations in wastewater effluents. In comparison, sand filtration and UV irradiation are less effective. However, a large discrepancy of removal efficiencies is apparent across different studies of these treatment processes. Increases in antibiotics concentration following tertiary treatment have also been observed. Possible reasons for the discrepancies, such as sorption to filtered particles, sampling strategies, specific operating parameters of wastewater treatment plants, and deconjugation, are discussed. It is concluded that the effects of tertiary treatment on antibiotic removal efficiency are still arguable, and caution must be taken when sampling wastewater in full-scale WWTPs for comparison of removal efficiencies of antibiotics.
污水处理厂（WWTP）已被确定为抗生素向环境释放的“热点”。WWTP 的处理操作可能会从进水废水中去除抗生素的很大一部分；然而，三级处理工艺对抗生素去除的影响尚不清楚。本综述的目的是总结关于常见三级处理工艺在全规模市政 WWTP 中从抗生素去除的现有文献，并揭示研究差距并为未来的研究方向提供信息。由于氯、紫外线（UV）辐照和砂滤在美应用广泛，因此对其进行了审查。通过三级废水处理去除抗生素的大多数研究都是在欧盟国家、美国、澳大利亚和中国进行的。氯化显著降低废水中抗生素的浓度。相比之下，砂滤和 UV 辐照的效果较差。然而，这些处理过程的不同研究中明显存在去除效率的巨大差异。在进行三级处理后，抗生素的浓度也有所增加。讨论了造成这种差异的可能原因，例如吸附到过滤颗粒上、采样策略、污水处理厂的具体操作参数和解偶联。结论认为，三级处理对抗生素去除效率的影响仍存在争议，在全规模 WWTP 中采样废水以比较抗生素去除效率时必须谨慎。
