Assessment and remediation of pollutants in Ghana's Kete-Krachi District Hospital effluents using granular and smooth activated carbon

Abstract

The need for simple, cheaper and high performance hospital effluent treatment system in Kete-Krachi District which is adjacent to the Lake Volta has necessitated this study. This study focuses on assessing, and treating Kete-Krachi District Hospital effluent using packed granular (GAC) and smooth activated carbon (SAC). The use of activated carbon is due to its less expensive method of operation, the ease to prepare from local raw materials, high availability, and effectiveness for treating hospital effluent. The dissolved oxygen (DO), chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), nutrient compounds (P-PO4, N-NO3), turbidity, pH, conductivity and total coliform parameters were investigated and later treated with the activated carbon. The average conductivity and P-PO4 removals were <50%. The average BOD5, COD, coliform, N-NO3, and turbidity removals for all the SAC treatments were 58.36%, 62.26%, 84.39%, 83.86%, and 50.74%, respectively. The DO also improved 3.8 times on the average. The pH of the raw and treated samples was within the limit 6.5–9. The results of this study suggest that the SAC is predominantly effective for reducing the pollutants concentrations of the hospital effluent which can result in oxygen depletion, eutrophication, algal bloom and ecosystem disturbance in the Lake Volta. It will also decrease the susceptibility of the Kete-Krachi residents to waterborne diseases as the effluents seep into the Lake.

An assessment of hospital wastewater and biomedical waste generation, existing legislations, risk assessment, treatment processes, and scenario during COVID-19

“…( Hocquet et al, 2016 ; Khan et al, 2020 ; Majumder et al, 2021a ). Many studies have reported the presence of a high concentration of coliform species and other bacteria species from HWW in different countries across the world ( Table S1 ) ( Majumder et al, 2021a ; Tulashie et al, 2018 ; Vo et al, 2016 ). García-Muñoz et al (2017) reported the total coliform concentration of around 3.8 × 10 6 MPN/100 mL in HWW of Madrid, Spain ( García-Muñoz et al, 2017 ).…”

Literature Review: Evaluation of Drug Removal Techniques in Municipal and Hospital Wastewater

“…Table 7 shows that the removal of pharmaceuticals from hospital wastewater has been investigated to a lesser extent, and this is because in many countries such wastewater is discharged into the sewers and treated together with municipal wastewater [ 8 ]. However, hospitals are considered to be a major source of pharmaceutical contamination, so treating them separately would be appropriate, as some pharmaceuticals may be present in high concentrations and would, therefore, be easier to treat [ 15 , 56 ].…”

“…Tulashie et al (2018) also reported that hospital effluent treatment studies have been conducted using techniques such as membrane filtration, activated carbon adsorption, and advanced oxidation processes. However, these techniques were found to be expensive and difficult to operate, especially in hospitals established in developing countries seeking to treat these effluents [ 15 ]. In contrast, techniques based on biological methods can produce effluents that preserve water quality standards at a reasonable cost for these facilities [ 41 ].…”

“…However, adsorption has the limitation of only transferring pollutants from the water to a porous structure, resulting in residues that will later require treatment or final disposal [ 14 ]. Likewise, membrane filtration faces challenges such as high operational energy demand [ 15 ]. Techniques based on chemical methods such as ozonation and photocatalysis have also been shown to be effective in removing drugs [ 16 ].…”

Removal of reactive violet 5 azodye (V5R) using bamboo, and calabash biochar

“…al, and Chung photocatalytically degraded V5R using Fe-Doped Titania [ 19 ], and TiO2 catalysts [ 13 ], nonetheless, this method can potentially produce intermediate products which may be more lethal than the pristine V5R [ 12 , 13 ]. Adsorption with activated carbon is one of the cost-effective, sludge-free, and simple to operate wastewater treatment processes [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. Thus, the elimination of dyes from wastewater by activated carbon is becoming popular because of its adsorptive efficiency for a wider range of adsorbates [ 23 , 24 ].…”