A review of wastewater treatment technologies for the degradation of pharmaceutically active compounds: Carbamazepine as a case study

The potential toxicological effects of pharmaceutically active compounds (PhACs) in natural water bodies have received considerable critical attention over the past years, encouraging numerous researchers to develop novel technologies to address the limitations of current wastewater treatment methods. Among the wide range of reported PhACs, carbamazepine is a well-known anticonvulsant that has often been used as a target compound in various studies because of its prevalence and resistance against degradation. The aim of this article is to summarize the research progress attained to date regarding the removal of this pharmaceutical as well as to evaluate and compare the performance of biological, physical, chemical and hybrid treatments. The review conducted on the available literature revealed that novel advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) and advanced reduction processes (ARPs) are a comprehensive set of promising techniques with an outstanding effectiveness, as most treatments allow for degradation rate constants in the order of 4 to 12 h-1, meaning that 99% carbamazepine removal can be attained in less than 70 min under optimal conditions. In particular, electrochemical and photocatalytic AOPs have consistently reported successful degradation results.