Challenges in pharmaceutical wastewater treatment

Pharmaceuticals are designed to be slowly degradable or even nondegradable to resist chemical degradation during passage through a human or animal body, but they present a special risk when they enter, persist or disseminate in the environment. Such substances are referred to as environmentally persistent pharmaceutical pollutants (EPPPs).

When released into the environment, the biological activity of environmentally persistent pharmaceutical pollutants may directly adversely affect non-target organisms, such as wildlife, and cause long -term impacts on ecosystem health and resilience. The latter occurs through population-level effects on reproductive ability, which persist into future generations of non-target organisms.

Water is one of the main components in the production process of many major pharmaceutical products. It is used not only as a raw material, but also for the extensive cleaning and washing of process equipment in compliance with stringent sterility norms.

This means that many pharmaceutical products/ bi-products easily find their way into the environment through the facility’s wastewater stream.

Pharmaceutical wastewater typically includes:

1. Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs): APIs are biologically active compounds in drugs. These are one of the major groups of emerging contaminants which can cause inimical effect on living organisms even at very low concentrations.

These contaminants don't degrade easily and persist in the environment due to their stable structure. With the increase in demand of Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs), there has been a sharp increase of these pollutants in water bodies.?

Examples include; ibuprofen, acetaminophen contained in a pain relief tablet, amoxicillin

2. Excipients: Pharmaceutical excipients are?ingredients other than the API present in a finished pharmaceutical drug formulation. These include lubricants, diluents, binders, flavorings, coating and coloring agents for the formulation, for example, colloidal silicon dioxide, which can only be removed by ultrafiltration

?3. By-products and Metabolites: These substances can be persistent and bio accumulative.

Typical municipal sewage treatment plants do not have the facilities to appropriately treat these contaminants. This can lead to their release into freshwater bodies, harming aquatic as well as human life.

Besides, most pharmaceutical products are produced in batches, which means the facility’s effluent will have changing parameters throughout the day. This can make it challenging to depend on a common effluent treatment plant (CETP) for effective removal of all contaminants. ?

?The unique nature of pharmaceutical wastewater requires specialized treatment approaches to avoid adverse effects on the environment and public health.

The most common approaches for addressing API-contaminated wastewater are:

1. Thermal oxidation/ incineration: Trucking and incineration of API-contaminated wastewater is a well-established practice in the pharmaceutical industry. Wastewater is collected and transported to be incinerated at special waste facilities to ensure complete destruction of APIs. This method is expensive, energy intensive, higher risk, and frequently at odds with corporate sustainability goals aimed at reducing waste, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, and improving safety and environmental performance.
2. Advanced oxidation: Here chemicals are used to generate hydroxyl radicals (OH*) which oxidize APIs in wastewater into smaller organic molecules. Conventional processes are: Ozone combined with Hydrogen peroxide (O3 / H2O2); Ultraviolet light combined with Hydrogen peroxide (UV / H2O2).While this method can be effective at treating some APIs at low concentration, they are expensive to implement and have performance limitations.
3. Activated carbon: Activated carbon is a media commonly used to adsorb natural and synthetic organic compounds from wastewater. In certain applications, it can be an effective treatment technology due to the highly porous nature and large surface area to which contaminants may adsorb onto the media. In pharmaceutical applications, it is used to adsorb, and thereby isolate, APIs in wastewater. However, activated carbon is only effective on certain APIs.
4. Membrane filtration techniques like Ultrafiltration are employed to remove colloidal silica which otherwise escapes the treatment process.

The dependency of efficiency of technology on the type of wastewater makes it important to approach Wastewater Treatment Innovators like Enviro Watertech Engineers to help you determine the set-up best suited for your needs.