Biological wastewater treatment of estrogens has been extensively studied in recent years. Lack of suitable analytical methodologies to identify the transformation products in complex environmental matrices led to the assumption that these compounds were mineralized and/or biotransformed to smaller molecules during wastewater treatment. This hypothesis led  researchers to overlook the formation of other by-products resulting from chemical and/or catalytical redox reactions also occurring in the environment. Results will be presented from a comparison of two different wastewater treatment scenarios, conventional activated sludge and pre-denitrification conditions, in regard to estrogens removal. The difference in performance between the two treatments were found to be caused not only by the distinctive bacterial communities involved in the biodegradation, but also because of the minimization of the rate of the oxidative coupling of estrogens when the treatment involved anoxic stages

Abiotic transformations in the removal of estrogens during wastewater treatment: Effects of operating conditions

244th National Meeting (2012)

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