Wastewater treatment and emerging contaminants removal in electro membrane bioreactor using self-forming dynamic membranes

In recent years, the technical-scientific community has been paying increasing attention to the presence of emerging contaminants that are intercepted in surface water and wastewater since these compounds could have harmful effects on human health and on environment too. Conventional wastewater treatment installations represent a source of pollution from emerging contaminants because they are not designed to remove these compounds from the wastewater in their treatment cycle. Several studies have shown the possibility of removing successfully these compounds from wastewater through the use of membrane bioreactors (MBR) combined with electrochemical processes, using conventional membranes. The present study first examined the possibility of combining electrochemical processes with MBR (eMBR), through the use of self-forming dynamic membranes (SFDM) for the removal of emerging contaminants from municipal wastewater. Thanks to this extremely innovative hybrid system, it has been possible to reduce the problems linked to the use of traditional membranes, in particular the high costs both of initial investment and of cleaning following fouling. Particularly, the four most drugs used by humans representing different therapeutic groups, diclofenac (DCF) as anti-inflammatory, carbamazepine (CBZ) as anti-epileptic, amoxicillin (AMX) as antibiotic, estrone (E1) as sexual hormone and as a pesticide used in agriculture, atrazine (ATZ) it has been analysed.