Trace pharmaceutical active compounds (PhACs) in drinking water have been attracting wide attention due to their hazardous impacts and negative effects on human health and ecology, and their removal from drinking water has been becoming a priority. Here, we used the methods of UPLC-triple-TOF/MS to screen PhACs in the Shangxi Drinking Water Treatment Plant (DWTP) in Zhejiang, East China, and found the occurrence of ibuprofen, propranolol, and gemfibrozil. The current processes of DWTP cannot remove PhACs effectively. Gemfibrozil has the highest average concentrations among PhACs with 0.464, 1.292, and 0.583 ng/L at the units of sand filtration, ozonation-biological aerated filter (ozonation-BAF), and clean water pool, respectively. In a pilot-scale test, the ozonation removes 21.1–67.9% of gemfibrozil, while the catalytic ozonation with ceramic catalyst achieves removal efficiencies of 55.6–85.2% in 3.6 min. Gemfibrozil is degraded by catalytic ozonation through two pathways: initiated by ·OH reaction with aromatic ring C2 or started with ·OH attacking aromatic ring C3. This study reveals the existence of PhACs in DWTP and validates a feasible way of catalytic ozonation with a ceramic catalyst to remove them quickly.
Rare information is available on fouling behavior of customized nanofiltration (NF) membrane evoked by pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) under real multiple influent matrices pretreated by ultrafiltration module beforehand. To this end, a novel tight NF membrane with excellent perm-selectivity and antiadhesion was fabricated and used to assess its separation performance/mechanism and fouling behavior to a broad range of small molecular PhACs in the context. The adsorption ratio results revealed that the affinities between five selected PhACs and the customized nanocomposite membrane surface were all much weaker (below 5.5%) than the solute-solute interacting forces (between 23.6 and 83.2%), whether for natural or synthetic complex micropollutants. The predominant membrane fouling could be interpreted by the incomplete blocking model in the permeation of both influent conditions. For neat nanocomposite membrane, the order of critical factors important on separation mechanism was electrostatic effect, adsorption and steric hindrance. The fouling layer seemed to act as a secondary separating layer for those negatively charged or hydrophilic PhACs, but showed the cake enhanced concentration polarization effect for the neutral and hydrophobic ones. This study provides valuable insights for defining PhACs fate and NF membrane fouling behavior to fit increasingly stringent criteria for wastewater treatment.
危险品化学品经营许可证（带存储）