New technology for the treatment of wastewater is being developed at CXI

Tomáš Lederer's team from CXI is developing a new technology for the treatment of conventionally treated wastewater in cooperation with PRO-AQUA CZ, s.r.o. The cooperation between the two expert partners will reduce the burden of surface water contaminated with pharmaceutical substances. The PRO-AQUA CZ research consortium and the CXI team led by Tomáš Lederer want to increase the efficiency of the treatment of conventionally treated wastewater, but also to remove pharmaceuticals and other micropollutants from the water very efficiently.

"Although the largest point sources of pharmaceutical pollution are hospitals, aftercare centres or nursing homes, most of the pollution enters the wastewater from the general population together with sewage. Therefore, in order to optimise the reduction of pharmaceutical substances in wastewater, it is necessary to address both the input from primary producers and from the general population," explains Tomas Lederer, an expert at the Institute for Nanomaterials, Advanced Technologies and Innovations. "Unfortunately, few hospitals and other point sources in the Czech Republic have their own wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), and the wastewater is discharged into public sewers after treatment (so-called hygienisation), where pharmaceutical substances from small consumers already enter to a large extent. Therefore, we will be testing new technology for more efficient treatment of municipal wastewater at several wastewater treatment plants, including the Liberec WWTP and the WWTP for the Amazon Distribution Centre. Our goal is to reduce the burden of pharmaceutical substances on surface water," adds Tomáš Lederer.

The technology for removing pharmaceuticals from wastewater is based on a modern method combining a modified Advanced Oxidation Process and MBBR biotechnology (the original Norwegian technology - Moving Bed Biofilm Reactor), which PRO-AQUA CZ, also in cooperation with Tomáš Lederer's team, has introduced in the Czech Republic and has the largest number of such MBBR installations in the country. The MBBR reactor will be equipped with special composite micro- and nanofibre biomass carriers, with suspension biomass separation (membrane or sand filtration) and end-of-line sorption technology.

Existing wastewater treatment plants in the Czech Republic are not equipped with such technologies that would be able to completely eliminate all micropollutants from the wastewater and are discharged into surface waters.

"We are focusing on eliminating or significantly reducing further infiltration of this type of substances into the outflows of wastewater treatment plants. Therefore, we will work with CXI scientists to test jointly developed technologies that promise to remove pharmaceutical contaminants from wastewater very effectively and protect people and the environment," says Ing. Libor Novák from PRO-AQUA CZ.

CXI and PRO-AQUA CZ have collaborated on a number of research projects in the field of treatment processes over the last 10 years. In the first stage, they will focus on screening selected WWTPs for pharmaceutical contamination, installing pilot process equipment and starting initial testing.