A Review on Pharmaceutical Wastewater Characteristics, Treatment Techniques and Reusing

Abstract

Pharmaceuticals are chemicals that are bioactive and can have potential effects on living systems. After being used or excreted by wastewater (WW) and sewage treatment systems, various types of pharmaceuticals enter the environment. There should be no underestimation of the complexity of these hazards. More than 3,000 different substances are used in modern drugs, including painkillers, antibiotics, contraceptives, and many more. Therefore, it is important to find out the characteristics and treatment methods for pharmaceutical wastewater (PWW), because the disposal of raw PWW causes human and environmental problems. According to the current literature, various treatment options have been investigated for the removal or reduction of medicines in PWW, such as the up-flow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor, carbon filtration through activated carbon, membrane bioreactor (MBR), microalgal bioremediation, ultraviolet-free surface reactor (UV-FSR), solar or ferrioxalate photocatalysis, etc. Removal efficiencies for chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), total suspended solids (TSS), and total dissolved solids (TDS) in the PWW ranged between 20% and 95%. In light of the inadequacy of water resources, it’s necessary to know and develop methodologies for the treatment of pharmaceutical effluent as a part of water management.