Removal of Chemicals by a Wastewater Treatment!

Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Advanced Wastewater Treatment Processes for Removal of Chemical Emerging Concern

By: Ana Frescas

An increasing concern about a wide range of unsupervised but often used chemicals, since the 1990s, place a risk not only to our ecosystem but also to our human health, these chemicals are known as contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). CECs can cause enough harm in plant, animal, and human organisms, even though they are mainly discovered at low concentration levels. However not all CECs are harmful there are some that display no harm at all. The treatment process in wastewater that contains low concentrations of CECs makes it expensive and complicated. This study estimates the impacts in health and the environmental life cycle that are related to the elimination of CEC, which covers both the good and the bad from this process.  

https://pubs-acs-org.tamiu.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b00036

The removal of CEC in Wastewater Treatment Process (WWTP) to the human toxicity, and the total ecotoxicity are too small between the other treatment alternatives. The percentage removal of CEC is higher in the process of reverse osmosis (RO). Even though the advantages form the reduction of CEC are small its reason is because of the non-directed toxicity that was created in the course of the production of electricity. When there is higher use of electrical emission there is a high change of environmental toxicity within that area, which means that there would be a higher CEC removal, as for the lower use of electrical emission there would be less environmental toxicity and the necessity of performing CECs would be very low to not necessary.

Reference

Rahman, S.M., Eckelman, M.J., Onnis-Haydeen, A., and Gu, A.Z. 2018. Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Advanced Wastewater Treatment Processes for Removal of Chemical of Emerging Concern. Environ. Sci. Technol. pp A-J.