José Sanchez-Marcano

Membrane Bioprocesses for Pharmaceutical Micropollutant Removal from Waters

The purpose of this review work is to give an overview of the research reported on bioprocesses for the treatment of domestic or industrial wastewaters (WW) containing pharmaceuticals. Conventional WW treatment technologies are not efficient enough to completely remove all pharmaceuticals from water. Indeed, these compounds are becoming an actual public health problem, because they are more and more present in underground and even in potable waters. Different types of bioprocesses are described in this work: from classical activated sludge systems, which allow the depletion of pharmaceuticals by bio-degradation and adsorption, to enzymatic reactions, which are more focused on the treatment of WW containing a relatively high content of pharmaceuticals and less organic carbon pollution than classical WW. Different aspects concerning the advantages of membrane bioreactors for pharmaceuticals removal are discussed, as well as the more recent studies on enzymatic membrane reactors to the depletion of these recalcitrant compounds.

Large-scale enzymatic membrane reactors for tetracycline degradation in WWTP effluents

A mathematical model to simulate the performance of enzymatic membrane reactors was developed. It was applied to investigate the effectiveness of laccase immobilized over ceramic membranes for the degradation of tetracycline, a common antibiotic appearing as micropollutant in effluents of WWTPs. A process based on large-scale enzymatic membrane reactors in series was proposed for the treatment of the effluents from municipal, hospital and industrial wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). The obtained results demonstrated the need for high improvements in the amount of enzyme grafted on the membranes or on enzymatic kinetics to afford the technical and economic competitiveness of the investigated designs and the possibility to be implemented within existing installations.

Potentialities of active membranes with immobilized laccase for Bisphenol A degradation

Herein, we report the development of immobilized laccase based membrane bioreactor as a novel bio-catalytic system for the degradation of emerging endocrine disruptor i.e., Bisphenol A. Two laccase forms i.e. (1) in-house isolated and purified from an indigenous white-rot fungi Pycnoporus sanguineus (CS43) and (2) Trametes versicolor (commercial laccase from Sigma-Aldrich®) were immobilized on a multi-channel ceramic membrane (1.4μm in diameter) using 4% glutaraldehyde as a cross-linking agent. The immobilization yield and bisphenol A degradation activities of immobilized laccases were recorded at various pH levels. The surface topographies of immobilized-laccase membranes were accessed by scanning electron microscopy. In this study, 100% degradation of bisphenol A (20mg/L) was achieved in less than 24h in the presence of laccase from P. sanguineus (CS43) (620.55±14.85U/L) and T. versicolor (620.55±14.85U/L). The enzymes showed an optimal activity at pH 5 and 5.4 with a degradation rate of 204.8±1.8 and 79.0±0.1μmol/min/U for P. sanguineus (CS43) and T. versicolor, respectively. In conclusion, the highest immobilization of unit per square centimeter and efficient degradation potentiality strongly recommend the newly developed immobilized laccase based membrane bioreactor as a novel tool to tackle emerging contaminants degradation issues.