Removal of antibiotics in sand, GAC, GAC sandwich and anthracite/sand biofiltration systems

Drinking water biofiltration offers the possibility of removal trace level micropollutants from source water. Sand, granular activated carbon (GAC), GAC sandwich (a layer loaded in middle sand bed), and anthracite-sand dual biofilters were set-up duplicate at bench-scale to mimic filtration process real drinking treatment works. During 3-month system operation, five antibiotics (amoxicillin, clarithromycin, oxytetracycline, sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim) overall biofilter performance evaluated. Natural surface spiked with a mixture target was used as feedwater biofilters. Results showed that substantially removed (>90%) by GAC-associated partially (≤20%) alone In particular, exhibited superior compared sand/anthracite biofilter, comparisons among all indicated both adsorption biodegradation contributed Adsorption kinetics sulfamethoxazole fitted pseudo-first-order model, while trimethoprim, amoxicillin, oxytetracycline clarithromycin pseudo-second-order model. All Langmuir model according isotherm experiment. To date, this is first study evaluating Overall, research will provide useful information which can be for optimising or updating existing processes industry reduce antibiotic residues