Treatment of hospital wastewater effluent by nanofiltration and reverse osmosis

Abstract

Considerable concern exists regarding the appearance and effects of trace and ultra trace pollutants in the aquatic environment. In this context, it is necessary to identify relevant hot spot wastewater - such as hospital wastewater - and to implement specific wastewater treatment solutions. Membrane bioreactor (MBR) technology seems to be a suitable pre-treatment approach for the subsequent advanced treatment by high pressure membrane systems such as nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO). This paper is based upon investigations on the first full scale MBR for separate treatment of hospital wastewater in Germany. In this study an NF as well as an RO module for further treatment of the MBR filtrate were tested. The removal efficiencies were assessed using the following target compounds: bezafibrate, bisoprolol, carbamazepine, clarithromycin, ciprofloxacin, diclofenac, ibuprofen, metronidazole, moxifloxacin, telmisartan and tramadol. In summary, the results of this study confirmed that MBR technology followed by an advanced treatment for trace pollutant removal is an adequate approach for specific treatment of hot spot wastewater such as hospital wastewater. In particular, it was shown that - comparing the tested NF and RO - only (a two stage) RO is appropriate to remove pharmaceutical residues from hospital wastewater entirely. The recommended yield of the 2-stage RO is 70% which results in a retentate sidestream of 9%. Our investigations proved that RO is a very efficient treatment approach for elimination of trace pollutants.

Full scale membrane bioreactor treatment of hospital wastewater as forerunner for hot-spot wastewater treatment solutions in high density urban areas

“…Results on the efficiency of such advanced technologies for the treatment of hospital wastewaters can be found in Pinnekamp et al (2009) andBeier et al (2010).…”

Occurrence, Ecotoxicology, and Treatment of Anticancer Agents as Water Contaminants

“…Efficiency of cyclophosphamide removal by reverse osmosis membrane was much higher than that by nanofiltration membrane [27]. This finding was confirmed in the treatment of hospital effluent that contained multiple targeted pharmaceutical compounds [28].…”

Coupling membrane filtration and wet air oxidation for advanced wastewater treatment: Performance at the pilot scale and process intensification potential

“…Ceramic UF (300 kDa) also removed 97.7% of hydrocarbons and 98.4% of turbidity in real bilge wastewater . For the treatment of wastewater containing pharmaceuticals, the removal rate of chemical oxygen demand (COD) for commercial RO was higher than 98% . Even if some membrane processes such as MBR with acclimated specific biomass could treat a hospital effluent with more than a 99.6% codeine removal, the previous membrane processes (UF and RO) increase the concentration of the pollution, and, thus, reduce the cost of ultimate waste treatment.…”