Electrochemical Treatment of Antibiotics in Wastewater

Antibiotics are vital for the healthcare of human and animals; these products are used to prevent, alleviate and cure disease and give a better way of living. However, after administration a large fraction of these products are excreted unchanged into water bodies, and nobody knows about the ultimate destination of these chemical compounds. Similarly the possible adverse effects due to the presence of these chemical to environment and human health are unknown due to lack of information. Most of the antibiotics products are reached to water bodies unaltered and known as active pharmaceutical ingredient. These products are transformed into metabolites and even into some other compounds through natural process which occurs in aquatic environment. Currently different technologies such as physical, chemical and biological or advance oxidation processes are used to treat the antibiotics. Some of these technologies are time consuming, ineffective and non-adequate for the emerging contaminants; furthermore few methods like AOPs (Advance Oxidation Processes) are innovative and efficient but they are expensive, need high energy and produced reactive or unstable oxidant which are not able to remove refractory contaminants. Therefore it needs an innovative green technologies which enable to decontaminate the water containing antibiotics. The electrochemical technologies offer an alternative way to treat these pollutants; the major process are electro-oxidation, electro-reduction, electrocoagulation, electro-Fenton, photoelectron-Fenton, sono-electrochemical, etc. The electrochemical technologies have some advantages over the other oxidation processes, like easily operation, high efficiency, coupling with other process, and low temperature required for its operation; moreover it can be powered with the help of solar panel to decrease the energy consumption. However still exist some challenges to overcome like designing and cost of electrode, improving the basic scientific understanding and in some cases the production of toxic intermediates. This study explores the electrochemical technologies and their application towards treatment of antibiotics.