Determination and removal of antibiotics in secondary effluent using a horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland

Increased attention is currently being directed towards the potential negative effects of antibiotics and other PPCPs discharged into the aquatic environment via municipal WWTP secondary effluents. A number of analytical methods, such as high performance liquid chromatography technologies, including a high performance liquid chromatography-fluorescence method (HPLC-FLD), high performance liquid chromatography-UV detection method (HPLC-UV) and high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry method (HPLC-MS), have been suggested as determination technologies for antibiotic residues in water. In this study, we implement a HPLC-MS/MS combined method to detect and analyze antibiotics in WWTP secondary effluent and apply a horizontal subsurface flow constructed wetland (CW) as an advanced wastewater treatment for removing antibiotics in the WWTP secondary effluent. The results show that there were 2 macrolides, 2 quinolones and 5 sulfas in WWTP secondary effluent among all the 22 antibiotics considered. After the CW advanced treatment, the concentration removal efficiencies and removal loads of 9 antibiotics were 53–100% and 0.004–0.7307 μg m−2 per day, respectively.