Abstract
Conventional sewage treatment systems are generally not designed to remove micropollutants, requiring the development of new technologies, such as the combination of biological processes with advanced oxidative processes. The configuration of an anaerobic expanded granular sludge bed (EGSB) reactor stands out for its use of granular biomass and high sludge bed expansion. Ozonation is an advanced oxidative process that stands out as one of the most promising technologies for the degradation of micropollutants. Thus, the present work aimed to evaluate the removal of drugs through the application of ozonation as a polishing process for the effluent of an EGSB reactor that was fed with synthetic sewage. Ozonation was shown to be efficient in the degradation of these compounds, reaching removals above 90%. It was found that the degradation profile of each drug varied according to its chemical structure since some drugs are more susceptible to oxidation than others and since the concentrations of pharmaceuticals are also related to their removal. Moreover, the assessment of risks to the environment and human health confirmed the need to assess the best scenario for risk reduction considering all drugs, since even with almost complete removal of some compounds, the effluents still showed toxicity. Thus, the high removal efficiencies found for the evaluated micropollutants showed that this technique has the potential to be used to improve the quality of biological reactor effluents or even to be combined in effluent reuse systems.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG), and Fundação Coordenação de Projetos, Pesquisas e Estudos Tecnológicos (COPPETEC) for granting financial resources.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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This study receives financial resources and scholarship from Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).
Financial resources from Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG), and Fundação Coordenação de Projetos, Pesquisas e Estudos Tecnológicos (COPPETEC) helped in the acquisition of equipment and reagents used in the development of the research.
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. FVF and MCSA contributed to the idealization of the work as well as the acquisition of resources. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by CVF, GCM, APBA, LEM, LPO, and BCR. The first draft of the manuscript was written by CVF, GCM, APBA, LEM, and LPO, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Faria, C., Moreira, G.C., Araújo, A.P.B. et al. Integration of ozonation and an anaerobic expanded granular sludge bed reactor for micropollutant removal from sewage. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 23778–23790 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11399-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11399-3