Pharmaceuticals removal and microbial community assessment in a continuous fungal treatment of non-sterile real hospital wastewater after a coagulation-flocculation pretreatment

Abstract

Hospital wastewaters are a main source of pharmaceutical active compounds, which are usually highly recalcitrant and can accumulate in surface and groundwater bodies. Fungal treatments can remove these contaminants prior to discharge, but real wastewater poses a problem to fungal survival due to 2 bacterial competition. This study successfully treated real non-spiked, nonsterile wastewater in a continuous fungal fluidized bed bioreactor coupled to a coagulation-flocculation pretreatment for 56 days. A control bioreactor without the fungus was also operated and the results were compared. A denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and sequencing approach was used to study the microbial community arisen in both reactors and as a result some bacterial degraders are proposed. The fungal operation successfully removed analgesics and anti-inflammatories, and even the most recalcitrant pharmaceutical families such as antibiotics and psychiatric drugs.

Carbamazepine as a Possible Anthropogenic Marker in Water: Occurrences, Toxicological Effects, Regulations and Removal by Wastewater Treatment Technologies

“…This is because bacterial contamination under non-sterile conditions can negatively affect the performance of whole-cell WRF [154,167]. Indeed, poor removal of CBZ has been reported in fungal bioreactors operated under non-sterile conditions as compared to sterile fungal bioreactors [168][169][170]. For instance, Nguyen et al [161] reported only 5% CBZ removal in a whole-cell fungal membrane bioreactor.…”

Isolation of Fungal Strains from Municipal Wastewater for the Removal of Pharmaceutical Substances

“…Conventional wastewater treatment technologies cannot always remove pharmaceutical substances efficiently [1]. In such cases, the pharmaceuticals are released into the environment where they negatively affect living organisms.…”

Evaluation of the applicability of the aquatic ascomycete Phoma sp. UHH 5‐1‐03 for the removal of pharmaceutically active compounds from municipal wastewaters using membrane bioreactors

“…For a MBR based on a mixed culture of bacteria and white-rot fungi, a moderate removal of CBZ and DF (20 and 40%, respectively) from synthetic wastewater has been reported [7]. Removal of DF (by more than 90%) and CBZ (in the range of 50-80%) from nonsterile hospital wastewater, upon application of T. versicolor in a continuous fluidized bed bioreactor coupled to a coagulation-flocculation pretreatment step, has also been described [11].…”