Publication

Abstract : There is strong evidence that presence of emerging contaminants in environment including pharmaceutical compounds at very dilute concentration have deteriorating effects on various species. In general the concentration of these pollutants detected in environment ranges between ng/L to μg/L, but their concentration is elevated (mg/L) in the point sources including pharmaceutical industrial effluent. In India, highest concentration of Ciproflaxin (31 mg/L) was reported in the effluent from a generic medicine production centre in Hyderabad. To improve the removal of these emerging contaminants, pre-treatment of the highly concentrated pharmaceutical wastewater can be done before it is let into a domestic waste water treatment plant. In this work, treatment of synthetic pharmaceutical industry effluent containing critical pharmaceutical contaminants (PC) Metformin employing a photocatalytic system was investigated. Chosen factors include concentrations of contaminants (50 – 100 mg/L), TiO2 dosage (500 – 1000 mg/L) and reaction time (10-30 min). MINITAB software was employed to perform the standard regression analysis and the corresponding second-order polynomial equation was constructed between the chosen response (contaminant removal) and the three factors.