Assessment of Advanced Photocatalytic Oxidation process for Micropollutant Elimination in Municipal and Industrial Waste Water Treatment Plants

Pharmaceuticals, personal care products, pesticides and other chemicals used for domestic purpose or industrial production are continuously discharged into wastewater and lead to global contamination of the aquatic environment all over Europe [1]. Removal during conventional wastewater treatment is unsatisfactory knowing that only 20 to 50% of micropollutants are removed in current waste water treatment plants [2]. Analytical methods become more and more sensitive so that traces of organic compounds are nowadays detected in waste, surface and ground waters. The Water Framework Directive listed 45 priority substances to be controlled. Two hormones and one painkiller have been added in 2013 in this directive as well as three antibiotics macrolides, one pesticide, one anti-UV and one anti-oxidant in 2015. The objective of the AOPTi project is to develop and validate an innovative technology to ensure efficient elimination of different types of micropollutants and toxic effects in waste water. Relevance and behaviour of transformation products in the treated water is investigated as second issue. The process is a tertiary treatment process, which can be easily integrated into municipal and industrial WWTPs. It is an economical physico-chemical treatment step after the conventional biological treatment [3]. The process is based on oxidation by ozone and a subsequent photocatalytic treatment combined with a biological active adsorption step as final finishing process. The technology is developed for companies involved in the water purification sector and for companies with toxic effluents loaded with micropollutants. Process parameters have to be determined depending on the type of waste water in order to lead to almost total degradation of all micropollutants and to ensure absence of toxicity of the resulting water. Treated water will be characterized in term of chemical transformation products (TPs) and toxicity