Low-Cost Adsorptive Removal Techniques for Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products

Abstract

The production and consumption of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) have grown ominously over the last 3–4 decades. PPCPs, often considered as emerging contaminants, are being perceived as a serious risk to receiving environments, especially water bodies, due to their ecotoxicological effects. Further, many of the PPCPs are generally persistent, leading to their environmental accumulation, which is evident from the several PPCPs detected in rivers, lakes, groundwater, and soils at variable concentration levels. Although high-end and energy intensive systems like membrane processes are fairly effective in the removal of PPCPs from water or wastewater, conventional treatment technologies often fail to remove PPCPs, and hence treated effluents from various sewage treatment plants have been reported to contain PPCPs from parts per million (ppm) to parts per trillion (ppt) levels. This chapter will discuss the cost effective technologies, especially adsorptive removal methods, being developed for the remediation, recovery, and treatment of PPCPs. A series of low-cost natural and synthetic adsorbents are being investigated, and have shown variable effectiveness and potential for the removal of PPCPs. The chapter will include a state-of-art literature summary on various low-cost adsorbents tested for the removal of selective PPCPs.