0000000000218923

AUTHOR

James M. Raude

Occurrence, distribution, and risk assessment of pharmerciuticals in wastewater and open surface drains of peri-urban areas: Case study of Juja town, Kenya.

Abstract The occurrence of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) in the environment is becoming a major area of concern due to their undesirable effects on non-target organisms. This study investigated the occurrence and risk of contamination by five antibiotics and three antiretrovirals drugs in a fast-growing peri-urban area in Kenya, with inadequate sewer system coverage. Due to poor sewage connectivity and poorly designed decentralized systems, wastewater is directly released in open drains. Water and sediment samples were collected from open surface water drains, while wastewater samples were collected from centralized wastewater treatment plants (WWTP). Solid-phase extraction and u…

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Pineapple peel biochar and lateritic soil as adsorbents for recovery of ammonium nitrogen from human urine.

Abstract Human urine is a rich source of nitrogen which can be captured to supplement the existing sources of nitrogen fertilizers thus contributing to enhanced crop production. However, urine is the major contributor of macronutrients in municipal wastewater flows resulting into eutrophication of the receiving water bodies. Herein, pineapple peel biochar (PPB), and lateritic soil (LS) adsorbents were prepared for the safe removal of ammonium nitrogen (NH4+-N) from human urine solutions. Physicochemical properties of PPB, and LS were characterized by scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy…

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Mass loading, distribution, and removal of antibiotics and antiretroviral drugs in selected wastewater treatment plants in Kenya.

The discharge of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) into the aquatic environment from wastewater effluents is a concern in many countries. Although many studies have been conducted to evaluate the APIs removal efficiencies and emissions to the environment in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), most of these studies considered the aqueous and sludge phases, disregarding the suspended particulate matter (SPM) phase. To try to understand the role of the SPM, the occurrence of five most common antibiotics and three antiretroviral drugs (ARVDs) commonly used in Kenya were investigated in this study. APIs partitioning and mass loading in influents and effluents of three different WWTPs: tr…

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Phosphorous removal from human urine using lateritic soil

Phosphorous (P) in human urine is among the macronutrients in municipal wastewater that has exacerbated eutrophication of water bodies. Adsorption of P from wastewater using cost effective, environmentally friendly, and efficient adsorbents is considered as an attractive method that can both mitigate the eutrophication problem and augment the already strained P reserves. In the present study the adsorption capacity and structural properties of lateritic soil (LS), the adsorbent for removal of P from human urine, was investigated using XRF, SEM, TGA and FTIR techniques. Batch adsorption experiments were conducted to determine various adsorption parameters such as the sorption rates, the conc…

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