New insights into the integrated application of Fenton-based oxidation processes for the treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater

Abstract Industrial and hospital effluents are often dumped into water streams. Since these effluents consist of higher concentrations of pharmaceutical residues, they are difficult to eliminate using conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) and are hazardous to humans and the environment. In contrast, biological treatment of wastewater is an environmentally friendly method that forms less sludge and is relatively inexpensive. However, like WWTP, biological treatment is less efficient in eliminating pharmaceutical residue from wastewater. Therefore, several other treatment options have been investigated globally, e.g., electro-Fenton (EF), and processes such as photocatalytic oxidation (PCO). Among them, the advanced oxidation processes, such as the Fenton process, were found to be comparatively more effective at the removal of pharmaceutical residues and have gained the continued attention of researchers. However, a primary disadvantage of the Fenton process is its significantly high energy consumption that makes its large-scale deployment cost-prohibitive. To overcome this challenge, several integrated treatments have been proposed by many scientific communities. This paper intends to review the available literature to explore the remediation of pharmaceutical wastewater using different versions of the Fenton oxidation process and finds that the integration of the Fenton's oxidation process with a biological process results in the complete degradation of the pharmaceutical residue in wastewater.