A critical review of treatment for pharmaceutical and personal care products in water with a focus on hybrid technologies
Fatima Mansour, George M. Ayoub, Mahmoud Al‐Hindi, Ramez M. Zayyat, Dana Bakkar
Abstract
• PPCPs threaten water quality and pose risks to ecosystems and human health. • Hybrid treatment technologies offer improved PPCP removal efficiency. • Large-scale implementation of hybrid systems is hindered by economic and practical challenges. • Future research must focus on optimizing hybrid technologies for environmental sustainability. Water quality is of crucial importance for human health and environmental integrity. The increase in global population comes with an increase in the consumption of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs), and correspondingly, an increased likelihood that they will occur in the global waterways. PPCP occurrence poses a hazardous risk to the water ecosystem and by extension the environment as a whole, whereas their exposure to PPCPs constitutes a health risk to humans and aquatic wildlife. Thus, the application of water treatment technologies that effectively remove PPCPs is crucial. The currently applied methods in existing treatment plants do not effectively remove PPCPs. In fact, the scientific community has concluded that single technology treatment cannot provide sufficient PPCP removal. Hence, there has been growing research that focuses on combining advanced treatment technologies into hybrid systems for more effective removal efficiency. This work presents an in-depth review of this research, critically assessing the available information and identifying the areas lacking. The literature indicates that while there is a significant number of studies in the field, there is a notable lack of data that pertains to the economic considerations and environmental sustainability of hybrid technologies. Furthermore, most studies address a very narrow selection of PPCPs, overlooking the impacts of PPCP cocktails which may alter system performance and removal in undetermined ways. These concerns render practical large-scale applications challenging to implement, emphasizing the need for directed future research that treats real-life wastewater and considers the economics and overall environmental sustainability of treatment processes.