GIM Study Finds Better Way to Remove Wastewater Pollutants
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Chemicals found in everyday products, from plastics to personal care items, can enter municipal wastewater and remain there even after conventional treatment. A new study involving a researcher from the Goa Institute of Management (GIM) suggests that changing the sequence of existing treatment methods could help remove more of these pollutants.
The research, published in the journal Environmental Technology, found that combining biological treatment with ultraviolet (UV) light and hydrogen peroxide was more effective at removing certain endocrine-disrupting chemicals than conventional wastewater treatment under the conditions tested.
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can interfere with the body’s hormonal system. They enter wastewater through domestic and industrial discharges, and removing them becomes particularly difficult when several chemicals are present together.
The study focused on three such chemicals: Diethyl Phthalate (DEP), Butyl Paraben (BuP) and Bisphenol A (BPA), which are used in various consumer and industrial products.
Prof Mehak Puri, Assistant Professor at GIM’s Centre for Excellence in Sustainable Development, conducted the research in collaboration with Dr Kavita Gandhi and Dr M. Suresh Kumar from the CSIR-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Nagpur.
The researchers tested six combinations of biological treatment and advanced oxidation to understand which sequence worked best.
They found that treating wastewater first through a biological process, followed by UV light and hydrogen peroxide, produced the strongest results among the methods examined.
In laboratory tests, the process completely removed DEP and achieved more than 90 per cent removal of BuP and BPA. It also reduced Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), a measure of the organic load in wastewater, by 90.5 per cent.
By comparison, the conventional municipal wastewater treatment method removed between 36.41 per cent and 55.11 per cent of the target chemical mixture under the tested conditions.
Speaking about the findings, Prof Puri said conventional wastewater treatment systems were not necessarily designed to deal with emerging pollutants, particularly when different chemicals were present together.
“Emerging pollutants in wastewater are a growing concern because conventional treatment systems are not be designed to remove them, especially when different chemicals occur together,” she said.
She added that limited standards and policies addressing these pollutants in India made it important to explore treatment methods that could remove chemical mixtures effectively and affordably.
One possible advantage of the approach is that it could be introduced as an additional treatment stage rather than requiring wastewater treatment plants to replace their existing systems.
However, the researchers cautioned that the findings are based on laboratory-scale experiments. Although the study used real municipal wastewater, the three target chemicals were added at concentrations higher than those typically found in the environment.
This allowed the team to compare treatment methods under controlled conditions, but further research would be needed to assess their performance and costs at larger treatment facilities.
The findings suggest that combining biological treatment with advanced oxidation could offer a way to improve the removal of emerging pollutants from municipal wastewater, particularly as concerns grow over chemicals that conventional treatment systems may not adequately eliminate.
