Combined electrochemical-advanced oxidation and enzymatic process for treatment of wastewater containing emerging organic contaminants

Hossain Md Anawar*, Golam Ahmed

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

9 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Some emerging organic contaminants such as endocrine-disrupting compounds, pharmaceuticals and personal care products, antibiotics, hormones, disinfection by-products, and volatile organic compounds are widely distributed in groundwater, surface water, river water, drinking water treatment plants, wastewater, and wastewater treatment plant effluents. These emerging contaminants demonstrate the biological and toxicity effects on human health and aquatic ecosystems, endocrine disruption, antibiotic resistance, loss of biodiversity, human infertility, and cancer. Conventional water and wastewater treatment technologies have shown low efficiency to remove these emerging contaminants. Instead, they produce by-products and high cost. Advanced oxidation and other processes such as electrochemical process, enzymatic/electroenzymatic oxidation, Fenton reaction, ozonization, photocatalytic oxidation, ultrasonic oxidation, membrane filtration, activated carbon adsorption, phytoremediation, and biodegradation can be applied to remove these emerging organic contaminants from wastewater. The enzymatic oxidation and electrochemical oxidation are the most promising techniques to remove antibiotics and hormones. The integrated (advanced oxidation and biological) approach demonstrated the better performance in wastewater treatment processes. Although enzymatic catalysis has high potential to remove endocrine-disrupting compounds due to its high reactivity and selectivity, it has some disadvantages as well. However, the electroenzymatic advanced oxidation process has the best efficiency to degrade different organic compounds. The combination of Fenton process with electrochemical oxidation (viz., electro-Fenton treatment) showed 90% COD reduction from biologically treated industrial effluent. A novel electrochemical approach combining electroenzyme (horseradish peroxidase) and electrocoagulation removed bisphenol A with 100% efficiency.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEmerging and nanomaterial contaminants in wastewater
Subtitle of host publicationadvanced treatment technologies
EditorsAjay Kumar Mishra, Hossain Md Anawar, Nadjib Drouiche
Place of PublicationAmsterdam; Oxford, UK; Cambridge, USA
PublisherElsevier
Chapter10
Pages277-307
Number of pages31
ISBN (Electronic)9780128146743
ISBN (Print)9780128146736
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2019

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