Hospital wastewater treatment by sponge membrane bioreactor coupled with ozonation process

Herein, a sponge membrane bioreactor (Sponge-MBR) combined with ozonation process was performed to remove the antibiotics which frequently existed in the hospital wastewater. Whilst seven antibiotics i.e., norfloxacin, ciprofloxacin, ofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole, erythromycin, tetracycline and trimethoprim were widely used in medications, this integration was applied for the evaluation of treatment performance under different fluxes. As the results, whilst the antibiotics were eliminated about 45–93%, the tetracycline was completely removed (100%) using Sponge-MBR operated at the flux of 10 LMH. For enhancement of antibiotics removal, the ozonation process was introduced to treat the membrane permeate. Overall efficiencies were 97 ± 2% (trimethoprim), 92 ± 4% (norfloxacin), 90 ± 1% (erythromycin), 88 ± 4% (ofloxacin), 83 ± 7 (ciprofloxacin) and 66 ± 1% (sulfamethoxazole). These results demonstrated Sponge-MBR coupled with ozonation could be a prospective technology for the hospital wastewater treatment.