AER/I Seminar – Suvanker Saha

About the event

Speaker:  Suvanker Saha

Title:  Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products – potential environmental contaminants and their removal options.

Abstract:

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products (PPCPs) are widely used in our everyday life and found in trace amounts in wastewater streams and surface water. Traditional wastewater treatment systems cannot adequately treat emerging pollutants like PPCPs due to their low concentration and molecular nature. Hence, public health concerns related to negative environmental impacts and consequences (i.e. microbial problems and ecosystem balance) have increased tremendously in recent years due to acute & chronic toxicity of PPCPs. There is a growing consensus that alternative technologies must be implemented to address these emerging contaminants. Updating a tertiary treatment process step with oxidation, UV-degradation, reverse osmosis, nano-filtration, adsorption, metal organic frameworks have been studied by several research groups. Removal efficiencies as well as contemporary economic feasibility studies have been addressed towards appropriate solutions to PPCPs contamination, for which adsorption stands out as a prominent method. Therefore, ecofriendly approaches with low cost adsorbent materials like biochar, clays, chitosans need to be reviewed further for better treatment of PPCPs with pilot plants and operations.