Pharmaceuticals removal and microbial community assessment in a continuous fungal treatment of non-sterile real hospital wastewater after a coagulation-flocculation pretreatment

Hospital wastewaters are a main source of pharmaceutical active compounds, which are usually highly recalcitrant and can accumulate in surface and groundwater bodies. Fungal treatments can remove these contaminants prior to discharge, but real wastewater poses a problem to fungal survival due to bac...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Mir-Tutusaus, Josep Anton, Parladé, Eloi, Llorca, Marta, Villagrasa, Marta, Barceló, Damià, Rodriguez-Mozaz, Sara, Martínez-Alonso, Maira Ramos, Gaju, Nuria, Caminal, Glòria, Sarrà, Montserrat
Format: article
Status:Versión aceptada para publicación
Publication Date:2017
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/199113
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/199113
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Hospital wastewater
Fungal bioreactor
Pharmaceutical active compounds
Continuous treatment
Non-sterile
Pretreatment
Description
Summary:Hospital wastewaters are a main source of pharmaceutical active compounds, which are usually highly recalcitrant and can accumulate in surface and groundwater bodies. Fungal treatments can remove these contaminants prior to discharge, but real wastewater poses a problem to fungal survival due to bacterial competition. This study successfully treated real non-spiked, non-sterile wastewater in a continuous fungal fluidized bed bioreactor coupled to a coagulation-flocculation pretreatment for 56 days. A control bioreactor without the fungus was also operated and the results were compared. A denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and sequencing approach was used to study the microbial community arisen in both reactors and as a result some bacterial degraders are proposed. The fungal operation successfully removed analgesics and anti-inflammatories, and even the most recalcitrant pharmaceutical families such as antibiotics and psychiatric drugs.