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Removal of highly polar micropollutants from wastewater by powdered activated carbon

  • Wastewater Reuse Applications and Contaminants of Emerging Concern (WRA & CEC 2012)
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Abstract

Due to concerns about ecotoxicological effects of pharmaceuticals and other micropollutants released from wastewater treatment plants, activated carbon adsorption is one of the few processes to effectively reduce the concentrations of micropollutants in wastewater. Although aimed mainly at apolar compounds, polar compounds are also simultaneously removed to a certain extent, which has rarely been studied before. In this study, adsorption isotherm and batch kinetic data were collected with two powdered activated carbons (PACs) to assess the removal of the polar pharmaceuticals 5-fluorouracil (5-Fu) and cytarabine (CytR) from ultrapure water and wastewater treatment plant effluent. At pH 7.8, single-solute adsorption isotherm data for the weak acid 5-Fu and the weak base CytR showed that their adsorption capacities were about 1 order of magnitude lower than those of the less polar endocrine disrupting chemicals bisphenol A (BPA) and 17-α-ethinylestradiol (EE2). To remove 90 % of the adsorbate from a single-solute solution 14, 18, 70, and 87 mg L−1 of HOK Super is required for EE2, BPA, CytR, and 5-Fu, respectively. Effects of solution pH, ionic strength, temperature, and effluent organic matter (EfOM) on 5-Fu and CytR adsorption were evaluated for one PAC. Among the studied factors, the presence of EfOM had the highest effect, due to a strong competition on 5-Fu and CytR adsorption. Adsorption isotherm and kinetic data and their modeling with a homogeneous surface diffusion model showed that removal percentage in the presence of EfOM was independent on the initial concentration of the ionizable compounds 5-Fu and CytR. These results are similar to neutral organic compounds in the presence of natural organic matter. Overall, results showed that PAC doses sufficient to remove >90 % of apolar adsorbates were able to remove no more than 50 % of the polar adsorbates 5-Fu and CytR and that the contact time is a critical parameter.

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Acknowledgments

This research project has been supported by a Marie Curie Early stage Research Fellowship of the European Community’s Sixth Framework Programme under contract number MEST-CT-2004-505169, as well as by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology through the AiF - German Federation of Industrial Research Associations “Otto von Guericke”. The authors would like to thank Bettina Sterkele from Eawag, Switzerland for fruitful and inspiring discussions, Damian Helbling, also from Eawag, for revising the manuscript, Robert McLaughlan from University of technology Sidney for checking the quality of the English, as well as Wolfgang Dott, and Thomas Schettgens from University Hospital Aachen, Germany for providing the instrumentation and lab space.

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Correspondence to Juliane Hollender.

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Responsible editor: Vinod Kumar Gupta

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Kovalova, L., Knappe, D.R.U., Lehnberg, K. et al. Removal of highly polar micropollutants from wastewater by powdered activated carbon. Environ Sci Pollut Res 20, 3607–3615 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-012-1432-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-012-1432-9

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