Removal of Antibiotics from Wastewaters by Membrane Operations

This is an excerpt from the content: Antibiotics are persistent pollutants present in wastewaters originating from the pharmaceutical industry, but, due to their extensive human and veterinary use, they have also been found in municipal wastewaters. It has been observed that conventional activated sludge (CAS) wastewater treatment is not sufficient for the removal of antibiotics, and their presence in wastewater effluents is considered one of the causes of the emergence of antibiotic-resistant organisms. Several approaches have been proposed for the removal of antibiotics from wastewaters, the more promising being membrane bioreactors (MBRs), membrane filtration, and advanced oxidation processes or a combination of the above (Michael et al. 2013). Conventional wastewater plants were not designed to treat pharmaceutical compounds and, in particular, antibiotics, due to their highly variable chemical structure and properties. As a consequence, the efficiency of antibiotic removal varies according to the different antibiotic ...