Treatment and Disposal of Pharmaceutical Wastewater: Toward the Sustainable Strategy

The literature on the treatment of pharmaceutical wastewater over the period 1990–2015 has been reviewed to develop a sustainable treatment strategy. Analysis of the existing methods for treatment and disposal practices of pharmaceutical waste has been undertaken on the classification of the treatment methods under well-identified broad specific groups. The review reveals the associated merits and demerits of the traditional and the emerging methods and the challenges involved in overcoming the shortcomings. Considering the very diverse nature of the contaminants and the poor success rates of the existing technologies, it transpires that no single classical technology is capable of fully taking care of the hazards emanating from pharmaceutical waste discharges. On the other hand, some recent technologies such as membrane-integrated hybrid technologies are emerging as more successful ones than the conventional technologies. But, scale up confidence with respect to such new technologies is still very limited and needs to be substantially improved through extensive investigation on the pilot scale using real pharmaceutical wastewater rather than synthetic wastewater. This review directs the research focus to the development of sustainable treatment technologies.