Removal of multiple pharmaceuticals from water by electrochemical methods

• Main Authors: Yung-Ling Huang, 黃永凌
• Other Authors: 胡景堯
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/7w82yg

碩士 === 臺北醫學大學 === 公共衛生學系暨研究所 === 102 === Abstract During the last two decades, the amount of drug-using increase constantly in the world. Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have been detected as emerging contaminants of the novel concern in the aquatic environment. Due to the variety of pharmaceutical compounds are used in the whole medical treatment, and the traditional urban sewage water treatment plants can not remove the pharmaceuticals completely, some of these compounds can be detected in the wastewater, especially in the hospital wastewater. The direct discharge of these effluents into sewerage system, therefore, may lead to a potential risk to the environment. Electro-chemical process has been used to treat many kinds of pollutants and its complex mechanism may be also useful to treat the complex pollutants in hospital wastewater or effluents. The chosen pharmaceuticals in this research are acetaminophen, diclofenac, ibuprofen, ketoprofen, sulfamethoxazole and atenolol, which are often detected in the hospital effluent wastewater. There are two kinds of electrochemical processes were used in this research, electro-oxidation and electrocoagulation-flotation. The difference between the two reactions is caused by the different material of the electrodes they used. Aluminum and stainless steel are used as the sacrificial electrodes for electrocoagulation-flotation process and graphite is used for electro-oxidation process. The results show that as single pharmaceutical in the water only hydrophobic pharmaceuticals can be removed by electrocoagulation-flotation process; while the most of the pharmaceuticals (except ibuprofen and ketoprofen) can be effectively removed by electro-oxidation process. In multiple- pharmaceuticals system, it can be found that the dissociated pharmaceuticals were more effectively removed than the neutral compounds in electro-oxidation process. The results of hospital waste water shows the removal efficiencies of all pharmaceuticals were similar to those in synthetic wastewater. The removal rate of pharmaceuticals, however, was better in the influent water than that in the effluent water because the residual calcium ions from the usage of trichloroisocyanuric acid tablets in the effluent. Finally, HPLC-DAD and UPLC-Q-TOF-MS was used to identify oxidation products, which finds that after electro-oxidation, diclofenac is attached of one chlorine by hypochlorite and a dimer polymer of acetaminophen was produced. These results are useful in using for the pre-treatment of secondary water treatment; thus, the biodegradation of the pharmaceuticals can be better and more efficacy.