EnviroChemie water treatment for the pharma Industry

Water treatment experts EnviroChemie specializes in the highly advanced and rigorous water treatment, purification, and detoxification that is demanded by the pharmaceutical, life sciences and healthcare sectors.

EnviroChemie water treatment equipment can treat and purify the process water required for sterile processes or environments and can also decontaminate wastewater or remove even trace elements or active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to protect the environment.

Pharmaceutical water challenges

Over recent years, concern has increased about environmental effects coming from pharmaceutical residues, especially APIs. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirms increased trace concentrations of pharmaceuticals, typically at levels in the nanograms to low micrograms per litre range, detected in the water cycle, including surface waters, wastewater, groundwater and at trace levels in drinking-water. The main concern is their prevalence across a wide range of water bodies.

Answering the question of what is water treatment plant criteria for success in dealing with pharma compounds is complex.

Conventional water treatment plant design, using activated sludge processes or other forms of biological treatment such as biofiltration, is not specifically configured to remove pharmaceutical compounds but may do so to varying degrees. However, these processes are variable and uncertain, with removal rates for pharmaceuticals ranging from <20% to > 90%. Their efficiency in removing APIs can depend, for example, on the operational regime of the water treatment facility. Factors influencing removal include sludge age, activated sludge tank temperature and hydraulic retention time.

Studies on conventional drinking water treatment steps have also shown that coagulation is largely ineffective in removing pharmaceuticals, with free chlorine being able to remove only around half the compounds investigated (including the antibiotics sulfamethoxazole, trimethroprim and erythromycin).

In comparison, advanced wastewater treatment processes, such as ozonation, advanced oxidation, activated carbon adsorption and membrane filtration (e.g. nanofiltration, reverse osmosis), can achieve much higher removal rates for pharmaceuticals of above 99% for targeted pharmaceutical compounds.

EnviroChemie pharmaceutical water treatment services

EnviroChemie offers a wide range of water treatment services and solutions that can deal with pharmaceutical and life sciences challenges, including highly advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) such as Envochem® AOP. These plants provide chemical-physical solutions for removing the residues of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) or endocrine disruptor chemicals (EDCs) from wastewater. They can either be used for batch treatments or in continuous treatment of flows of up to 400,000 liters per hour.

EnviroChemie’s also offers compact plants, which are specifically designed to sterilize and decontaminate wastewater from research facilities, hospitals and pharma or biotech  production plants and are widely used by laboratories, research institutes, authorities, hospitals and the pharmaceutical industry worldwide. The wastewater decontamination plants can also deal with radioactively contaminated wastewater.

The EnviroChemie product portfolio for the treatment of pharmaceutical process water ranges from standardized small plants up to customized large scale plants, using a range of advanced technologies that include Biomar® biological and Envochem® physical-chemical processes, ion exchanger based detoxification, and Envopur® membrane plants for the treatment of wastewater by reverse osmosis, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and membrane biology.

Resources

Click on EnviroChemie water treatment facilities for product information.
Click on Wastewater Sterilization/Decontamination to see Sterifix video.