Emissions of many organic micro-pollutants (OMP) into the aquatic environment can be efficiently reduced with advanced treatment at wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Post-treatment with activated carbon is currently considered as one of the most promising options, but powdered activated carbon (PAC) could also be dosed into the existing biological treatment process instead. Due to much greater concentrations of suspended and dissolved constituents the adsorptive OMP removal was expected to be severely hindered. Systematic comparative adsorption tests with samples from different process steps of a large conventional WWTP were conducted to investigate differences in adsorption competition and removal efficiencies. The results show that much greater competition occurs in the WWTP influent and in the anaerobic tank but removal efficiencies in the anoxic and aerobic tank and in the WWTP effluent were more similar than expected. Suspended solids thus seem not to severely affect OMP adsorption. Similar results were obtained in a comparison of different commercial PAC in all for the respective matrices. OMP removals showed a relation with the PAC dosage normalized to the concentration of dissolved organic carbon. In the anoxic and aerobic tank and in the WWTP effluent, a uniform correlation of OMP removals and reductions of UV light absorption was observed.
Keywords: Adsorption; Advanced wastewater treatment; Organic trace pollutants; Pharmaceuticals; Point source; Size-exclusion chromatography.
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