Performance of Ozonation Process as Advanced Treatment for Antibiotics Removal in Membrane Permeate

Abstract

There was an investigation on removal of 6 types of antibiotics from hospital wastewater through membrane bioreactor (MBR) treatment and ozonation process. Six types of antibiotics, namely, Sulfamethoxazole (SMZ), Norfloxacin (NOR), Ciprofloxacin (CIP), Ofloxacin (OFL), Erythromycin (ERY) and Vancomycin (VAN) which had high detection frequencies in collected samples from hospital wastewater treatment plant (HWTPs). After MBR treatment, removal efficiency of SMZ, NOR, OFL and ERY were 45%, 25%, 30% and 16%, respectively. Among of them, almost no elimination was observed for CIP and VAN since their concentration increased by 0.24 ± 0.18 (µg´l^-1) and 0.83 ± 0.20 (µg´l^-1), respectively. Then, residues antibiotics in MBR effluent were removed by ozonation process. The overall removal efficiencies of SMZ, NOR, CIP, OFL, ERY and VAN were approximately 66 %, 88 %, 83 %, 80 %, 93 % and 92 %, respectively. The reason might be depended on different ozone consumption of those antibiotics (ABS) in range of 313 to 1681 µgABS´gO₃^-1. Consequently, ozonation process performed better in antibiotics removal (e.g. CIP and VAN) so that ozonzation could be considered as important support for MBR treatment to reduce the risk of antibiotics residual.