What kind of contaminants are we talking about in hospital waste water?
Well, immediately after leaving the hospital, wastewater can contain:
- Bacteria and viruses
- Pharmaceutical
- antibiotics
- painkillers
- hormones
- antiseptics
- Incentives
- tranquillizers
- Disinfectants and sterilizers
- Fecal matter and urine
- Radioactive isotopes
- Personal Care Products
Heavy metals:
The irony of hospital wastewater is that it can cause human health problems if it is not treated properly. Some bacteria present in hospital waste are antibiotic-resistant bacteria, along with other pathogens that had infected patients. Presence in surface water can spread diseases even further and resistant bacteria can reproduce and mutate and become more difficult to cure in the future.
The impact of medicines on human health and marine life is still being monitored and researched, but scientists theorized that long-term exposure can cause serious problems for the surrounding ecosystem.
For hospitals that discharge directly into surface water, there are many environmental risks for living organisms. Some scientists have drawn parallels between surface water drugs and altered sex functions in fish, indicating that this can cause hormonal imbalances in aquatic life.
Personal care products are also known to cause problems with aquatic animals. The presence of organic material can also mean that nitrogen and phosphorus are in the wastewater and they can lead to algal blooms that lower the oxygen content of water bodies and cause fish to die in large quantities in a process called eutrophication.
To prevent such effects, it is important to take measures to ensure that hospital wastewater is treated properly. This may mean that municipal sewage treatment plants or industrial Ro plant system must adapt their existing systems to process specific waste water from hospitals, which may require a separate sewage line or another way of keeping it separate from domestic waste water.
In addition, regulatory reform could require hospitals to treat their own wastewater on site to an acceptable level before sending it through the sanitary sewer to the municipal WWTP for further treatment or discharge into surface water bodies.
So which treatment technology could be used for this application?
In recent years, electro coagulation (EC) has grown in recognition and use as a feasible, effective, and efficient water treatment method for a wide range of industries. This technology is well equipped to also address applications for waste water treatment in hospitals. By using electrical current supplied to a series of electrodes, the effluent solution is destabilized, allowing particles to coagulate and float to the surface through bubbles formed at the cathode.
EC has the ability to remove and reduce a number of unwanted contaminants from different sources. Such contaminants include emulsified suspended solids, dissolved solids, pathogens, organic and inorganic chemicals, and even certain pharmaceutical residues.
This paper shows the removal rates of Diclofenac, carbamazepine and amoxicillin between 70-90% in EC treatment. In this case EC could be used in an integrated hospital water treatment system for the removal of pathogens and pharmaceutical residues from hospital waste water flows.
Electro coagulation is not only effective, but it is also easy to operate and maintain, and usually requires no additional chemicals for treatment, except for possible pH adjustment or electrode cleaning.
The lower life cycle costs of international companies specialized electro coagulation systems can protect waterways against pathogens and drug residues that may be harmful to humans, animals and aquatic life.
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