How can we remove micro-contaminants from wastewaters more environmentally?
4 October 2018
Scarcity of water and concerns about the ecotoxicity of micro-contaminants are driving an interest in the use of advanced tertiary processes in wastewater treatment plants.
In recent study, Dr Gallego Schmid et al. have evaluated through life cycle assessment four advanced process options for removal of micro-contaminants from real effluents: i) solar photo-Fenton (SPF) operating at acidic pH; ii) acidic SPF coupled with nanofiltration (NF); iii) SPF operating at neutral pH; and iv) neutral SPF coupled with NF. The results of this work suggest that ongoing efforts on developing neutral SPF should instead be focused on further improvements of its acidic equivalent coupled with NF.