الفهرس 
INTRODUCTION AND AIM OF THE WORKOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 86 |  |  |
| | | from | 86 | | |
Abstract
The conventional and non-conventional water resources in Egypt are limited. In Alexandria, water resource is El-Mahmoudia canal and it is delivered to eight water treatment plants for treatment. This water resources are polluted by releasing chemicals, organic and non-organic products from industrial effluents. These products cause an increase in BOD, COD, TDS and TSS. So these water resources became unsuitable for drinking, irrigation and aquatic life.
Pharmaceutical industry is an essential segment in the industrial pollution. Drug residues such as hormones, antibiotics, poisonous chemicals, or surfactants, as well as volatile organic compounds, are found in pharmaceutical waste with high BOD and COD, so they affect very severely the biosphere and the efficiency of wastewater treatment plant.
This industry also caused the release of other compounds such as polymers and aluminum that are used in packaging of bottles and strips, these polymers are also hazardous substances. Among these released pharmaceutical compounds, the antibiotics which have anti-microbial activities.
Antibiotics have bad impacts on both human and the environment. As they cause a risk for health problems including dangerous antibiotic-resistant infections, damaging of sensitive Gut Flora which supports immunity and proper digestion and increasing the cases of untreatable gonorrhea and other inflammatory diseases. Antibiotic residues can reach the aquatic environment by many routes; the most important of them is the pharmaceutical industries where the concentrations of antibiotics were reported up to level of milligrams.
Penicillin represents the most widely used antimicrobials in the last century and still constitute the most important group of antibiotics. Amoxicillin is the most common one of penicillin. AMX is effective against a wide range of infections caused by gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria and is used for the treatment and prevention of respiratory, gastrointestinal, urinary and skin bacterial infections. It acts by inhibiting the biosynthesis of the cell wall causing osmotic lysis. Because AMX is excreted intact in urine and faeces, traces of the drug or its breakdown products may be found in ambient water bodies. It’s also quickly destroyed by biotic and abiotic processes, resulting in a variety of intermediate metabolites.
The conventional techniques of pharmaceutical wastewater treatment include the primary stage for removing the coarse solids, secondary stages for removing the dissolved organic matters including drug residues, the activated sludge process is one of several biological wastewater treatment alternatives in secondary treatment.
After the primary and secondary treatment stages, there is the tertiary treatment which is more advanced treatment techniques and it includes filtration adsorption process using activated carbon followed by MBR. Another technique in the tertiary treatment like ozonation process which follows the MBR for attaching organic substances, advanced oxidation process for destroying the organic pollutant, reverse osmosis process for removal of negative charge particles, among the tertiary treatment techniques bacterial bioremediation by using microorganisms to reduce the contamination.
This study is a descriptive study in a pharmaceutical factory in El-Amreya district. The factory has its own activated sludge treatment unit that is consisting of primary sedimentation tank, aeration tank, secondary sedimentation tank and chlorination unit. A total number of 30 samples were collected, three samples in ten visits from three sites. The three sampling sites are; site 1 that represents the outlet of antibiotic manufacturing unit, sampling site 2 that represents the pharmaceutical wastewater before treatment and the sampling site 3 that represents the pharmaceutical wastewater after treatment.
Physicochemical analysis were conducted for the pharmaceutical wastewater samples and compared with the concentration of AMX that was measured in each sample by HPLC and its values ranged between 122-8191, 65-1223 and 22.5-840 in site 1,2 and 3 respectively.
The physical parameters included; temperature that ranged between 19-45 °C in sampling site, 24-35 °C in sampling site 2 and 19-31 °C in sampling site 3, while TSS was ranged between 23-1960, 34-201 and 6-72 mg/l in sampling site 1,2 and 3 respectively and there was a proportional relationship between TSS values and AMX’s concentration because of the powder form of AMX.
The chemical parameters included; pH that was not exceed 6.0 in sampling site 1, while it raised in sampling site 2 and 3, DO that was always zero in sampling site 1 then it raised up to ranges of 0,0-1.5 mg/l because of organic load and bad aeration in sampling site 2, and 0.75-4.5 mg/l in sampling site 3 due to aeration in the treatment process. BOD that recorded values ranged between 11- 380 mg/L in sampling site 1 because of the effect of AMX that inhibits the bacterial growth which affect the microorganism in BOD test, and ranged between 50-2500, 29-399 mg/l in site 2 and 3 respectively. But COD that is affected by the organic load of AMX so its values in sampling site 1 ranged between 185-6834 mg/L, then in sampling site 2 and 3 its values ranged between 201-1666 and 31-26 mg/l respectively because of dilution factor and treatment.
The study found that there was a negative relationship between AMX’s concentration and the removal percentage of COD and BOD, but final results after the treatment were in accordance with 44/2000 Decree (Egyptian Ministry of Housing, 2000), This is may be due to the biocidal impacts of AMX upon the biomass in the treatment unit. Material balance was performed for AMX as waste to assess the concentration of AMX and effect of mixing with the other unit and treatment unit.
The study concluded that the most analytical physicochemical parameters were complying with the Egyptian decree no. 44/2000 (Egyptian Ministry of Housing, 2000). The study recommends more studies on the positive impacts of segregating or/and sedimentation of AMX on spot, which may cause more efficiency in WWTP. These studies may affect positively the efficiency of activated sludge unit, and also to study the possibilities of the magnitude of combing AMX with heavy metals from the other units.