Targeting the elimination of anti-cancer drugs from wastewaters via some advanced oxidation and membrane processes

The detection of anti-cancer drugs in surface water bodies around the globe calls for upgrading currently applied wastewater treatment plants. Therefore one of the main objectives of this PhD thesis was to investigate advanced oxidation processes able to avoid such pollution. In addition of developing technological solutions, characterization of pollution sources was performed in this work. Results evidenced the presence of cytostatic drugs in hospital wastewaters, even though a major part of drug is administrated to patients in the ambulatory regime in Belgium (94%-w).
In this work, two advanced oxidation process were investigated : photocatalytic membrane reactor (PMR) and photochemical oxidation (UV/H2O2). First PMR tests evidenced that catalyst particles were effectively confined in the system when using a ceramic ultrafiltration module at a transmembrane pressure of 3 bar and cross flow velocity of 3 m/s. Further photocatalytic tests showed that secondary wastewater effluent hindered the formation of OH radicals responsible for pollutants degradation.
A successive filtration method of the investigated matrix highlighted that ionic species hindered more the removal rates than the natural organic matter. When comparing PMR and UV/H2O2 processes with an economic and life cycle analysis, the UV/H2O2 process scored best. However, the formation of toxic by-products was observed during the reaction of OH radicals with compounds present in the real water matrices investigated.
Therefore UV/H2O2 stands as a promising technology for advanced water treatment, but still requires further studies to be implemented at large scale.