Effective Removal of Estrogens from Drinking Water and Wastewater by Adsorption Technology

Abstract

Estrogens, either of natural or synthetic origin, are well known for their impact on the reproductive system of both humans and animals. With conventional wastewater treatment it is not possible to remove estrogens efficiently. Subsequently, estrogen contaminated water enters the hydrological cycle and leads to an accumulation in surface water, groundwater as well as in drinking water. Therefore, new methods have to be introduced in order to face the increasing contamination of wastewater. Aim of this in vitro study was the characterization of adsorbents which are used in the field of extracorporeal blood purification for their potential use in wastewater treatment. For the conducted batch experiments, we used activated carbon as well as hydrophobic resins and anion exchangers to characterize their adsorption kinetics and capacity for estrogen. 17β-Estradiol (E2), as a model substance for the natural estrogens (E1-E4), as well as synthetic 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2) were added to both distilled water and water taken from the draining channel of a local purification plant. Adsorbents were added at a concentration of 1 g/L water. Samples were taken at 0, 15, 30, 60 and 120 min and analyzed by a newly developed simplified HPLC-based method. Our results show that hydrophobic resins based on Polystyrene-Divinylbenzene (PS-DVB) are promising materials for the effective removal of estrogens from wastewater. Adsorption technology could be an efficient technique to upgrade sewage treatment plants for the removal of estrogens from the hydrological cycle.

Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose Sponges for the Adsorption of Estrogenic Pollutant

“…Hybrid sponges of TEMPO‐oxidized cellulose nanofibers and poly(ethylene imine) have been used successfully as adsorbents for p ‐nitrophenol, 2,4,5‐trichlorophenol amoxicillin, and heavy metal ions . For the adsorption of EE, hybrid composites of carbon nanostructures on layered silicate fragments and magnetite, biochars, single‐wall carbon nanotubes, and poly(styrene‐divinylbenzene) resin have been applied successfully as adsorbents. However, there is scarce literature about hybrid adsorbents of polysaccharides and magnetite for the removal of estrogenic pollutants such as EE, as represented schematically in Figure d.…”

Adsorption of Phenol from Aqueous Solution Using Lantana camara, Forest Waste: Packed Bed Studies and Prediction of Breakthrough Curves

“…The eminent among them includes silica gel (Førland and Blokhus 2007;An et al 2009), red mud (Wang et al 2008;Tor et al 2006), zeolites (Damjanović et al 2010;Yousef and El-Eswed 2009;Melidis 2015), activated alumina (Danis et al 1998;Adak and Pal 2006) and activated carbon. But because of the expensive nature of the above materials, there is a need to do further research to produce adsorbents from locally available agricultural materials (Hartmann et al 2014;Banat and Al-Asheh 2000).…”

Impact of 17β-Estradiol on Natural Water’s Heterotrophic Nitrifying Bacteria

“…Existing research on environmental estrogen has focused on the effects of environmental estrogen on the physiological function of humans and animals, and there is ample evidence that EEs can cause abnormalities in the endocrine system, nervous system, and immune system [5]. For a long time, it has been thought that estrogen only has an effect on higher organisms with its receptors, so the research involving microorganisms focuses on the use of microorganisms to The authors are with Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China (e-mail: 201811180152@mail.bnu.edu.cn, 201811180150@mail.bnu.edu.cn, zengwh@bnu.edu.cn, henryzjo@bnu.edu.cn).…”