Improving antibiotic removal and anaerobic digestion performance of discarded cefradine pellets through thermo-alkaline pretreatment

Discarded cefradine pellets (DCP) as the hazardous wastes contain lots of bioavailable sucrose. Anaerobic digestion (AD) may be a promising technology for treating DCP, achieving dual goals of waste treatment and resource recovery. However, high concentration of cefradine will inhibit the AD process. This study applied thermo-alkaline pretreatment (TAP) to remove cefradine and improve the AD performance of DCP. Around 95% cefradine could be degraded to different intermediate degradation products (TPs) in TAP at optimal condition, and hydrolysis and hydrogenation were the main degradation pathways. Quantitative structure-activity relationship analysis indicated that the main TPs exhibited lower toxicity than cefradine, and DCP residues after TAP were almost not toxic to E. coli K12 and B. subtilis growth by antibacterial activity analysis. Therefore, TAP promoted the biomethane yield in AD of DCP residues (274.74 mL/g COD), which was 1.91 times that of control group. Besides, compared to control group, final cefradine concentrations in liquids and sludge were significantly decreased in AD system with TAP, lowering environmental risk and indicating stronger prospect for process application. Microbiological analysis revealed that acidogens ( Macellibacteroides , Bacteroides ), syntrophs ( Syntrophobacter , Syntrophorhabdus ), and acetoclastic Methanosaeta were enriched in AD system with TAP, which contributed to improving AD performance of DCP.