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    Biodegradability and toxicity of pharmaceuticals in biological wastewater treatment plants

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    In this experimental study both biological treatability of pharmaceuticals and their potential toxic effect in biological processes were evaluated. The pharmaceuticals were selected among those that are present at higher concentration in the Italian wastewater treatment plant effluents and widely used as antiulcer (ranitidine), beta-blocker (atenolol) and antibiotic (lincomycin). The present paper is the continuation of a work already presented,[1] which used a synthetic wastewater fed to laboratory scale SBR (Sequencing Batch Reactor) operated with different sludge ages (8 and 14 days), different biochemical conditions (aerobic or anoxic-aerobic mode) and several influent drug concentrations (2, 3 and 5 mg/L). In this case a real municipal wastewater was used as influent to the SBR. In parallel, batch tests were conducted to determine the removal kinetics of drugs and nitrogen. Toxicity tests using a titrimetric biosensor to verify possible inhibition on microorganisms were also performed. Finally, the possible adsorption of the pharmaceuticals on activated sludge was evaluated. The drugs under investigation showed different behaviours in terms of both biodegradability and toxicity effect on nitrifiers. Ranitidine showed generally low removal efficiencies (17-26%) and a chronic inhibition on nitrification. Atenolol showed generally higher removal efficiencies than ranitidine, even if the fairly good efficiency obtained in the previous experimentation with synthetic wastewater (up to 90%) was not attained with real wastewater (36%). No inhibition on nitrification was observed on both acclimated and non acclimated microorganisms with a high nitrification activity, whilst it was present with activated sludge characterised by a lower nitrification activity. Consistently with his pharmaceutical properties, lincomycin showed significant inhibition on nitrification activity

    Application of accelerated carbonation on MSW combustion APC ash for metal immobilization and CO2 sequestration

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    The present study focuses on the application of an aqueous phase accelerated carbonation treatment on air pollution control (APC) residues from municipal solid waste combustion, aimed at assessing its influence on the environmental behaviour of the residue under concern, as well as the potential of the process in terms of sequestration of the CO2. APC residues are considered hazardous waste and must be treated before final disposal in order to achieve the immobilization/mobilization of critical contaminants such as heavy metals as well as mobilization of soluble salts. The treatment applied proved to be effective in reducing the mobility of Pb, Zn, Cr, Cu and Mo, the optimum final pH for the carbonated APC residues being in a range of 10–10.5, whilst a mobilization effect was noticed for Sb and no effect was assessed for chlorides. The effect of carbonation treatment on the contaminant release was further evaluated by means of a sequential extraction procedure, indicating that the distribution of contaminants on water soluble, exchangeable and carbonate fraction was modified after treatment. The CO2 sequestration potential assessed for the APC residues showed that the carbonation technology could be a technically viable option in order to reduce emissions from WtE plants
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