Synergizing Advanced Oxidation and Nature-Based Solutions: A Review on Multicomponent Strategy for Sustainable Pharmaceutical Wastewater Remediation
Ambika Kumar
*
Department of Chemistry, Bhagalpur National College, Bhagalpur, Pin-812007, (A Constituent Unit of T.M.B.U. Bhagalpur), Bihar, India.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are emerging as the major contaminants of great concern in the world water matrices due to their high numbers, distribution, and bioaccumulation possibilities. The review has examined around 80+ peer-reviewed articles (2014-2026) in the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases, based on the AOP-NBS synergy to pharmaceutical remediation. Systematic searches were done by using cluster of keywords such as advanced oxidation, nature-based solutions, emerging contaminants, and mineralization efficiency as the performance and sustainability of current hybrid treatments. The present review article, the existing and possible remediation techniques of the pharmaceutical waste water have been discussed. The study concludes that the conventional wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are far from efficient in eliminating complex active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Consequently, the integration of advanced oxidation process (AOPs) and nature-based solution is a most essential requirement to attain superior removal efficiencies. An example is hybrid treatment wetlands that used local zeolite that has shown almost 100 percent (93.6-99.9) removal of various antibiotics such as ciprofloxacin and ofloxacin. On the other hand, some of the non-biodegradable compounds such as carbamazepine and diclofenac are observed to be resistant to most treatment regimens with their presence in some systems only clearing 1.1%. The research emphasizes the importance of the hybrid technologies- the combination of biological technologies with AOPs to enhance the biodegradability and the nearly total mineralization. Moreover, the shift to a so-called circular economy based on recovery of resources (up to 80 percent regarding certain materials) and application of the principles of Industry is determined as the important direction of the future. This article offers a strategic guideline in selecting treatment units depending on the nature of wastewater with the aim to reduce the adverse impact of PPCPs on aquatic organisms and human health.
Keywords: Pharmaceutical wastewater, advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), treatment wetlands, hybrid systems, nature-based techniques, resource recovery