Removal of Natural Steroid Hormones from Wastewater Using Membrane Contactor Processes

Abstract

Growing demands for potable water have strained water resources and increased interest in wastewater reclamation for potable reuse. This interest has brought increased attention to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) as emerging water contaminants. The effect of EDCs, and in particular natural steroid hormones, on humans is of heightened interest in the study of wastewater reuse in advanced life support systems (e.g., space missions) because they are excreted in urine and have high endocrine-disrupting potencies. Direct contact membrane distillation (DCMD) and forward osmosis (FO) are being investigated for wastewater treatment in space. Retention of two natural steroid hormones, estrone and 17beta-estradiol, by these two processes was evaluated in the current investigation. DCMD provided greater than 99.5% hormone rejection; DCMD also provided constant flux, greater than 99.9% urea and ammonia rejection, and high water recovery. FO provided from 77 to 99% hormone rejection depending on experiment duration and feed solution chemistry.

Performance of a novel osmotic membrane bioreactor (OMBR) system: Flux stability and removal of trace organics

“…It is notable that the water flux did not increase as the concentration of NaCl in the draw solution increased beyond 1.5 M. It is also noteworthy that, in the FO mode, the effect of ICP on the water flux was more severe as the draw solution concentration increased. In previous investigations (Cartinella et al, 2006;Cornelissen et al, 2008;Achilli et al, 2009), the draw solution concentration was allowed to decrease as water diffused through the membrane from the feed solution, resulting in a gradual flux decline overtime. In this study, a conductivity control device was used to maintain a constant draw solution concentration throughout the experiment (see Section 2.4).…”

“…It is well established that conventional water and wastewater treatment processes are not adequate for the effective removal of many trace organic contaminants (Ternes et al, 2004). The need for a more robust treatment process has triggered many dedicated scientific investigations to develop new methods to obtain high quality treated effluent from domestic wastewater, particularly with a focus on the removal trace organic contaminants (Cartinella et al, 2006;Shannon et al, 2008;Alturki et al, 2010;Cath et al, 2010;Bernabeu et al, 2011;Li et al, 2011;Patterson et al, 2011).…”

“…Full scale application of FO for landfill leachate treatment has also been reported . In addition, FO has the potential to effectively remove a wide range of contaminants of concern in typical water and wastewater treatment applications, although this particular application is yet to be fully substantiated (Cartinella et al, 2006;Cath et al, 2010).…”

Xenobiotics Removal by Membrane Technology: An Overview

“…Wu et al [143] studied the application of MD in the treatment of a taurine rich pharmaceutical wastewater effluent where the concentrate obtained is very rich in taurine (66% purity). Cartinella et al [21] studied the removal of natural steroid hormones using MD. Rejections of estrone and estradiol are >99.5% without having much affect on the water recovery.…”

Module-scale simulation of forward osmosis module-part B: Modified Spiral-Wound

“…It only requires hydraulic pressure for pumping/circulation thus requires low operational energy. FO has shown effective for isolation of emerging contaminants in wastewater that often bypassing all treatments and eventually accumulate in the water bodies (Cartinella et al, 2006;Cath et al, 2010).…”