Pressure-driven membrane processes are often used for the separation and purification of organic compounds originating from biomass. However, membrane fouling remains a challenge as these biobased streams have a very complex composition and comprise a high fouling tendency. Conventional, the fouling is monitored based on either a decrease in flux or an increase in pressure over time. Those conventional techniques provide no information on the location, composition or amount of fouling. As fouling is often cumulative, it will be detected as a loss of performance. Once fouling becomes irreversible, it is often not possible to clean the membrane without chemicals and the filtration/separation process has to be stopped eventually. In situ real-time monitoring of membrane fouling could provide dynamic information on the development of fouling, allowing optimization of the process. This paper reviews the state of the art in in situ monitoring techniques that could be applied to membrane processes in the biotechnology, biorefinery and food sectors and briefly reflects on the current awareness of in situ monitoring techniques among experienced industrial users of membrane processes. The physical principles as well as the strengths and weaknesses are addressed, and potentially, promising techniques are identified.

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In recent years, accumulation of pharmaceutical compounds in the environment has been an issue of growing concern. Conventional wastewater treatment has limited effectiveness with many pharmaceuticals at concentrations of ppb or ppt scale. An intuitive solution would be to treat the pharmaceuticals-contaminated wastewaters at the source sites before dilution in sewer networks. Health institutions with concentrated drug consumption provide logical point 2 sources for pharmaceuticals entering the sewage. This paper describes the pilot-scale removal of a wide range of pharmaceuticals from real wastewaters via gas-phase pulsed corona discharge oxidation. The process was studied for raw sewage from a public hospital and for biologically treated wastewater of a health-care institute. The non-selective oxidation of the observed pharmaceuticals (32 compounds) was effective at reasonable energy cost: 87-% reduction in residual pharmaceuticals (excluding biodegradable caffeine) from raw sewage was attained with 1 kWh m-3 from the raw sewage and 100% removal was achieved for biologically treated wastewater at only 0.5 kWh m-3. The impact for affected aquatic environments upon the present solution would be a dramatically reduced load of pharmaceutical accumulation. Keywords Non-thermal plasma, Micropollutant, Drug, Hydroxyl radical, Ozone Highlights  A plasma pilot system is used for drugs abatement from point source wastewaters  An extensive range of 57 aqueous pharmaceuticals was monitored in plasma oxidation  Substantial reduction of residual medicines was achieved at feasible energy cost

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