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Removal of pharmaceuticals by ammonia oxidizers during nitrification

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Abstract

The adverse effect of pharmaceuticals on ecosystem and human health raises great interest for the removal of pharmaceuticals in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Enhanced removal of pharmaceuticals by ammonia oxidizers (AOs) has been observed during nitrification. This review provides a comprehensive summary on the removal of pharmaceuticals by AOs—ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB), ammonia oxidizing archaea (AOA), and complete ammonia oxidizer (comammox) during nitrification in pure ammonia oxidizing culture and mixed microbes systems. The superior removal of pharmaceuticals by AOs in conditions with nitrifying activity compared with the conditions without nitrifying activity was proposed. The contribution of AOs on pharmaceuticals removal in pure and mixed microbe systems was discussed and activated sludge modeling was suggested as the proper measure on assessing the contribution of AOs on the removal of pharmaceuticals in mixed microbe culture. Three transformation processes and the involved reaction types of pharmaceuticals transformation during nitrification were reviewed. The present paper provides a systematical summary on pharmaceuticals removal by different AOs across pure and mixed microbes culture during nitrification, which opens up the opportunity to optimize the wastewater biological treatment systems for enhanced removal of pharmaceuticals.

Key points

• The superior removal of pharmaceuticals by ammonia oxidizers (AOs) was summarized.

• The removal contribution of pharmaceuticals attributed by AOs was elucidated.

• The transformation processes and reaction types of pharmaceuticals were discussed.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Jiangsu Natural Science Foundation of China (No. BK20180010) and the National Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51978327, No. 21677071).

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Gang Wu wrote the manuscript, Jinju Geng was responsible for proofreading and reviewed the article. Ke Xu and Hongqiang Ren reviewed the article. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jinju Geng.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Wu, G., Geng, J., Xu, K. et al. Removal of pharmaceuticals by ammonia oxidizers during nitrification. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 105, 909–921 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-020-11032-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-020-11032-w

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