Surfactants in aquatic and terrestrial environment: occurrence, behavior, and treatment processes

Abstract

Surfactants belong to a group of chemicals that are well known for their cleaning properties. Their excessive use as ingredients in care products (e.g., shampoos, body wash) and in household cleaning products (e.g., dishwashing detergents, laundry detergents, hard-surface cleaners) has led to the discharge of highly contaminated wastewaters in aquatic and terrestrial environment. Once reached in the different environmental compartments (rivers, lakes, soils, and sediments), surfactants can undergo aerobic or anaerobic degradation. The most studied surfactants so far are linear alkylbenzene sulfonate (LAS), quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs), alkylphenol ethoxylate (APEOs), and alcohol ethoxylate (AEOs). Concentrations of surfactants in wastewaters can range between few micrograms to hundreds of milligrams in some cases, while it reaches several grams in sludge used for soil amendments in agricultural areas. Above the legislation standards, surfactants can be toxic to aquatic and terrestrial organisms which make treatment processes necessary before their discharge into the environment. Given this fact, biological and chemical processes should be considered for better surfactants removal. In this review, we investigate several issues with regard to: (1) the toxicity of surfactants in the environment, (2) their behavior in different ecological systems, (3) and the different treatment processes used in wastewater treatment plants in order to reduce the effects of surfactants on living organisms.

Quaternary ammonium compounds in soil: implications for antibiotic resistance development

“…The process has been reviewed elsewhere (Ying 2006;Zhang et al 2015;Jardak et al 2016) and therefore only a brief summary is given here. Generally, QAACs may be utilized by microorganisms as a source of carbon and energy (Ivankovic and Hrenovic 2010;Jardak et al 2016). However, while under aerobic conditions the biodegradation typically decreases with the number of non-methyl alkyl groups attached to the quaternary nitrogen, little if any biodegradation was observed under anaerobic conditions.…”

Cosmetic Ingredients as Emerging Pollutants of Environmental and Health Concern. A Mini-Review

“…The role of some cosmetic ingredients in environmental pollution is well-known; this is the case, for example, with surfactants. As a result of their presence in a broad range of personal care products intended for cleaning purposes (body wash, shampoo, hand cleanser), huge amounts of surfactants are discharged every day into aquatic and terrestrial environments, with widely recognised ecological risk and toxic effects on plant and animal species and human health [10]. The objective of this review was instead to provide an overview of some commonly used cosmetic ingredients that have not historically been considered of ecological concern but are now being monitored because of their suspected adverse ecological effects; in particular, we focused our attention on UV filters, parabens, triclosan, and microplastics, which are being considered as emerging environmental contaminants.…”

The use of moving bed bio-reactor to laundry wastewater treatment

“…The research included tests of two-stage moving bed bio reactor (MBBR), with two reactors filled with carriers Kaldnes K5 (specific area -800 m 2 /m 3 ) and total capacity equal to 400 dm 3 , have been realized in aerobic condition with coarse bubble aeration system. The scheme of the tested wastewater treatment system is presented in Figure 1.…”

“…Generally wastewater contains dissolved and solid impurities washed from processed fabric as well as washing agents [1,2]. Among, proposed in the subject literature, methods of treatment of wastewater containing surfactants, physicochemical, chemical (mainly oxidation), biological aerobic and anaerobic [3] as well as combined methods are indicated as effective for laundry wastewater treatment. A number of authors tested also membrane purification of laundry wastewater.…”