Use and Development of Diffusive Samplers to Analyse the Fate of Polycyclic Aromatic Compounds, Polychlorinated Biphenyls and Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater Treatment Processes

Abstract: The efficiency of wastewater treatment systems is commonly measured by the reductions of parameters such as biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total suspended solids (TSS) and/or reductions in levels of selected macro compounds (e.g. long-chained hydrocarbons and inorganic compounds). Less attention has generally been paid to micropollutants with high potential toxic effects, such as polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs), including unsubstituted and alkylated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dibenzothiophenes, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), human pharmaceuticals and by-products formed during the treatment process. These organic micropollutants occur in wastewaters at trace and ultra-trace levels, therefore their detection requires advanced, costly analyses and large sample volumes. Furthermore, concentrations of micropollutants can fluctuate widely both diurnally and between days. Thus, in order to understand the fate of micropollutants in wastewaters there is a need to develop sampling techniques that allow representative samples to be readily collected.In the work underlying this thesis two types of diffusive passive samplers, semipermeable membrane devices (SPMDs) and polar organic chemical integrative samplers (POCISs), were used to monitor non-polar and polar organic micropollutants in wastewaters subjected to various treatment processes. The pollutants sequestered in these samplers represent micropollutants in the dissolved phase that are available for aquatic organisms. Further, since they collect pollutants in an integrative manner, i.e. they sample continuously during the selected exposure time (usually approx. one to ca. three weeks), the results provide time-weighted average (TWA) concentrations. In addition, the effects of various environmental factors on the uptake of analyzed micropollutants in POCISs and SPMDs were investigated using laboratory calibration and in situ calibration with performance reference compounds (PRCs).The results confirm that SPMDs are good sampling tools for investigating the efficacy of wastewater treatment processes for removing non-polar PACs and PCBs, and the effects of varying the process settings. In addition, analyses of process streams in municipal sewage treatment plants demonstrated that conventional sewage treatment processes are not optimized for removing dissolved four-ringed PAHs, some of the five-ringed PAHs, and tri- to hexa-chlorinated biphenyls. The removal of bioavailable PACs was enhanced by adding sorbents with high sorption capacities to the sludge used in the activated sludge treatment step, and a biologically activated carbon system was designed that robustly removed bioavailable PACs, with removal efficiencies of 96.9-99.7 percent across the tested ranges of five varied process parameters.In situ SPMD calibration data acquired show that uptake of PACs, described by SPMD sampling rates (Rs), were four to eight times higher than published laboratory calibrated Rs values, mainly due to strong (bio)fouling and turbulence effects. In addition, the laboratory calibration study demonstrated that temperature affects the POCIS uptake of pharmaceuticals. The uptake of four pharmaceuticals was higher, by 10-56 percent, at 18 °C compared to 5 °C. For two of the pharmaceuticals our data indicate that the uptake was lower by 18-25 percent at 18 °C. Our results also indicate that uptake of the studied pharmaceuticals was in the linear phase throughout the 35 day exposure period at both temperatures. Finally, calibration studies enabled aqueous concentrations of micropollutants to be more accurately estimated from amounts collected in the passive samplers.