Current research trends on emerging contaminants pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs): A comprehensive review

Pharmaceutical and personnel care products (PPCPs) from wastewater are a potential hazard to the human health and wildlife, and their occurrence in wastewater has caught the concern of researchers recently. To deal with PPCPs, various treatment technologies have been evolved such as physical, biological, and chemical methods. Nevertheless, modern and efficient techniques such as advance oxidation processes (AOPs) demand expensive chemicals and energy, which ultimately leads to a high treatment cost. Therefore, integration of chemical techniques with biological processes has been recently suggested to decrease the expenses. Furthermore, combining ozonationwith activated carbon (AC) can significantly enhance the removal efficiency. There are some other emerging technologies of lower operational cost like photo-Fenton method and solar radiation-based methods as well as constructed wetland, which are promising. However, feasibility and practicality in pilot-scale have not been estimated for most of these advanced treatment technologies. In this context, the present review work explores the treatment of emerging PPCPs in wastewater, via available conventional, non-conventional, and integrated technologies. Furthermore, this work focused on the state-of-art technologies via an extensive literature search, highlights the limitations and challenges of the prevailing commercial technologies. Finally, this work provides a brief discussion and offers future research directions on technologies needed for treatment of wastewater containing PPCPs, accompanied by techno-economic feasibility assessment.

Automated summary

Pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) from wastewater pose potential hazards to human health and wildlife, prompting recent concern among researchers. Treatment technologies for PPCPs include physical, biological, and chemical methods, but advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) are expensive and energy-intensive. Integrating chemical techniques with biological processes and using ozone and activated carbon (AC) can improve removal efficiency. Lower-cost emerging technologies, such as the photo-Fenton method and solar radiation-based methods, as well as constructed wetlands, show promise. However, the feasibility and practicality of most advanced treatment technologies at the pilot scale have not been evaluated. This review explores the treatment of emerging PPCPs in wastewater using conventional, non-conventional, and integrated technologies, highlighting limitations, challenges, and future research directions in terms of techno-economic feasibility.