In view of risks associated with the discharge of pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment, the objective of this work was to assess the removal of paracetamol, salicylic acid and diclofenac from water by a microalgae-based treatment. For a comparison purpose, the growth and kinetic parameters for the removal of drugs were determined for three different microalgae strains, namely Chlorella sorokiniana, Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus obliquus. It was found that the drugs removal efficiency by these strains was related to their growth. Comparing the three pharmaceuticals, the salicylic acid was the most efficiently removed, especially by S. obliquus (>93% batch culture, >99% semicontinuous culture) and C. sorokiniana (>73% batch culture, >93% semicontinuous culture). Contrarily, paracetamol was the most poorly removed, the maximum efficiencies being those attained by C. sorokiniana (>67% batch culture, >41% semicontinuous culture). On the other hand, diclofenac was efficiently removed only by S. obliquus (>98% batch culture, >79% semicontinuous culture). For the three considered drugs, C. vulgaris was the strain showing the lowest removal capacity. The large differences here revealed between microalgae strains regarding their removal capacity of pharmaceuticals, pointed to the strain selection as a key issue for a successful application in wastewater treatment.

This work aims to transform the conventional class based on simple problem solving by active playful dynamics, in which each student participates actively as a role-play with his/her peers. It has been detected that the way that students have to face the resolution of an engineering problem goes a long way from how it would be solved in the world of work (students are accustomed to raise the resolution of an exercise according to the data that they have). However, the real experience is not so, but it is precisely the acquisition of data, and more specifically, the knowledge of what data to acquire, the real problem in solving this type of exercises. In this sense, a series of play activities were carried out (including the generation of an App) in order that students value the importance of the acquisition of data for the resolution of a problem. The conclusion obtained from this work indicates, on the one hand, the distance between the conventional teaching methodology used and the actual methodology to be applied and, on the other hand, this work presents the new dynamics proposed as a bridge to unify these differences.

The objective of this work was to assess and compare the removal efficiency of paracetamol and salicylic acid from aqueous medium by a microalgae-based treatment, using either Chlorella vulgaris or Tetradesmus obliquus. Moreover, considering microalgae application in wastewater treatment, the influence of these pharmaceuticals in the algal nutrient removal capacity was evaluated. The removal of paracetamol by T. obliquus (>40 %) was larger than by C. vulgaris (>21 %) in batch culture, and this was also observed for salicylic acid (>93 % by T. obliquus and >25 % by C. vulgaris). Both strains removed nutrients (phosphate and nitrate) almost completely by the end of the batch culture, but T. obliquus showed the highest efficiency at the steady state conditions of the semicontinuous culture. In spite of this, under the flocculants here tested, the efficiency in the recovery of biomass was much higher for C. vulgaris. These results highlight the importance of strain selection in the application of microalgae for wastewater treatment and, particularly, for the removal of pharmaceuticals.