Sanitary and Environmental Engineering Division (SEED), Department of Civil Engineering, University of Salerno, Fisciano 84084, SA, Italy.
Environmental Engineering Program, National Graduate School of Engineering, University of the Philippines, 1101 Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines.
Sci Total Environ. 2019 Nov 20;692:732-740. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.07.149. Epub 2019 Jul 11.
Pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs) have been detected at significant concentrations in various natural and artificial aquatic environments. In this study, electro membrane bioreactor (eMBR) technology was used to treat simulated municipal wastewater containing widely-used pharmaceuticals namely amoxicillin (AMX), diclofenac (DCF) and carbamazepine (CBZ). The effects of varying current density on the removal of PhACs (AMX, DCF and CBZ) and conventional pollutants (chemical oxygen demand (COD), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), humic substances, ammonia nitrogen (NH-N), nitrate nitrogen (NO-N) and orthophosphate (PO-P) species) were examined. High COD and DOC removal efficiencies (~100%) were obtained in all the experimental runs regardless of applied current density. In contrast, enhanced removal efficiencies for AMX, DCF and CBZ were achieved at high current densities. Membrane fouling rate in eMBR with respect to conventional MBR was reduced by 24, 44 and 45% at current densities of 0.3, 0.5 and 1.15 mA/cm, respectively. The mechanism for pharmaceutical removal in this study proceeded by: (1) charge neutralization between negatively-charged pharmaceutical compounds and positive electro-generated aluminium coagulants to form larger particles and (2) size exclusion by membrane filtration.
制药活性化合物（PhACs）已在各种自然和人工水生态环境中以显著浓度被检出。在这项研究中，电膜生物反应器（eMBR）技术被用于处理含有广泛使用的药物（如阿莫西林（AMX）、双氯芬酸（DCF）和卡马西平（CBZ））的模拟城市废水。考察了不同电流密度对 PhACs（AMX、DCF 和 CBZ）和常规污染物（化学需氧量（COD）、溶解有机碳（DOC）、腐殖质、氨氮（NH-N）、硝氮（NO-N）和正磷酸盐（PO-P）的去除效果。在所有实验运行中，均获得了高 COD 和 DOC 去除效率（~100%），而不管施加的电流密度如何。相比之下，在高电流密度下，阿莫西林、双氯芬酸和卡马西平的去除效率得到了提高。与传统 MBR 相比，在电流密度为 0.3、0.5 和 1.15 mA/cm 时，eMBR 中的膜污染速率分别降低了 24%、44%和 45%。本研究中药物去除的机制是：（1）带负电荷的药物化合物与电生成的正铝混凝剂之间的电荷中和，形成更大的颗粒，（2）通过膜过滤进行尺寸排除。
