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News | 2016-11-30

Sweden's first purification plant for removal of wastewater pharmaceutical residues under construction

Tekniska verken is building Sweden's first permanent large-scale treatment for removal of pharmaceuticals and personal care products from wastewater at the Nykvarn wastewater treatment plant in Linköping. The application of ozone means that over 90 per cent of the residues can be removed from the wastewater. The ozonation treatment has been evaluated in collaboration with IVL.

Ozone is a gas that has proved to be effective in removing pharmaceuticals and personal care product residues such as endocrine disruptors and antibiotics from wastewater. IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute and Tekniska verken have jointly carried out a pilot studies at the Nykvarn facility to evaluate the proper use of ozonation for the advanced wastewater treatment. The results have been very encouraging and led in the spring of 2015 to the decision to implement a permanent large-scale advanced treatment that utilizes ozone purification. The plant will be completed in the spring of 2017. It is expected to remove up to 90 percent of the residues found in wastewater today. – Using ozonation as a treatment method is somewhat controversial because there is an accompanying risk for harmful breakdown products. Its application at Tekniska verken, however, is designed in such a way as to utilize ozone’s effects to the maximum even for the purification of compounds other than persistent organic substances, and to avoid any negative effects by a smart process integration, says Christian Baresel at IVL, Project Manager for the pilot tests. He believes that we will see a number of similar installations in the future. – There are several other possibilities for achieving a resource efficient purification of pharmaceutical residues and other micro-pollutants and IVL is collaborating with several other treatment facilities around this. For more information, please contact: Christian Baresel, christian.baresel@ivl.se, phone +46-10-788 66 06

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