Converting waste streams such as urine into value-added products requires demonstrably attenuated risks from trace organic compounds. Given that 65% of pharmaceuticals are excreted in urine, the fate of pharmaceutical compounds and transformation products during fertilizer production from urine must be evaluated. In this work we combined suspect screening of hundreds of compounds with a unit process approach to determine the effect of several urine treatment processes on pharmaceutical fate. These treatment processes include standard practices like storage and acidification, as well as recent advances such as electrochemical stripping and ion exchange for nitrogen recovery from urine. Correlations between compound transformation and physicochemical characteristics were drawn and can be used in the future to predict the fate of newly detected compounds.

Pharmaceutical transformation during production of urine-derived fertilizers

256th National Meeting (2018)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.