Evaluation of the applicability of the aquatic ascomycete sp. UHH 5-1-03 for the removal of pharmaceutically active compounds from municipal wastewaters using membrane bioreactors.

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs) augmented with terrestrial white-rot basidiomycetes have already been tested for the removal of pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) from wastewaters. Within the present study, an aquatic ascomycete ( sp.) was initially demonstrated to efficiently remove several PhACs at their real environmental trace concentrations from nonsterile municipal wastewater on a laboratory scale. Then, a pilot MBR was bioaugmented with sp. and successively operated in two configurations (first treating full-scale MBR effluent as a posttreatment, and then treating raw municipal wastewater). Treatment of influent wastewater by the -bioaugmented pilot MBR was more efficient than influent treatment by a concomitantly operated full-scale MBR lacking sp and posttreatment of full-scale MBR permeate using the pilot MBR. A stable removal of the PhACs carbamazepine (CBZ) and diclofenac (DF) (39 and 34% on average, respectively) could be achieved throughout the pilot MBR influent treatment period of 51 days, without the need for additional nutrient supplementation (full-scale MBR: on average, 15% DF but no CBZ removed during 108 days). The long-term presence of sp. in the pilot MBR could be demonstrated using fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis, but still open questions regarding its long-term activity maintenance remain to be answered.