Conventional and emerging technologies for removal of antibiotics from wastewater

Phoon BL 1 , Ong CC 2 , Mohamed Saheed MS 2 , Show PL 3 , Chang JS 4 , Ling TC 5 Show all authors , Lam SS 6 , Juan JC 7

Affiliations 

  • 1 Nanotechnology & Catalysis Research Centre (NANOCAT), Level 3 Block A, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Fundamental & Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 32610 Seri Iskandar, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia; Centre of Innovative Nanostructures & Nanodevices (COINN), Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 32610 Seri Iskandar, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia
  • 4 Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, College of Engineering, Tunghai University, Taichung 407, Taiwan; Center for Nanotechnology, Tunghai University, Taichung 407, Taiwan; Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 701, Taiwan
  • 5 Institute of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 6 Pyrolysis Technology Research Group, Institute of Tropical Aquaculture and Fisheries (AKUATROP) & Institute of Tropical Biodiversity and Sustainable Development (Bio-D Tropika), Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia
  • 7 Nanotechnology & Catalysis Research Centre (NANOCAT), Level 3 Block A, Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; School of Science, Monash University, Sunway Campus, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. Electronic address: jcjuan@um.edu.my
J Hazard Mater, 2020 12 05;400:122961.
PMID: 32947727 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.122961

Abstract

Antibiotics and pharmaceuticals related products are used to enhance public health and quality of life. The wastewater that is produced from pharmaceutical industries still contains noticeable amount of antibiotics, and this has remained one of the major environmental problems facing public health. The conventional wastewater remediation approach employed by the pharmaceutical industries for the antibiotics wastewater removal is unable to remove the antibiotics completely. Besides, municipal and livestock wastewater also contain unmetabolized antibiotics released by human and animal, respectively. The antibiotic found in wastewater leads to antibiotic resistance challenges, also emergence of superbugs. Currently, numerous technological approaches have been developed to remove antibiotics from the wastewater. Therefore, it was imperative to critically review the weakness and strength of these current advanced technological approaches in use. Besides, the conventional methods for removal of antibiotics such as Klavaroti et al., Homem and Santos also discussed. Although, membrane treatment is discovered as the ultimate choice of approach, to completely remove the antibiotics, while the filtered antibiotics are still retained on the membrane. This study found, hybrid processes to be the best solution antibiotics removal from wastewater. Nevertheless, real-time monitoring system is also recommended to ascertain that, wastewater is cleared of antibiotics.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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