Features Of Typical Antibiotics In Wastewater Treatment Plants In Guangzhou And Zhuhai

The contaminations of antibiotics in aquatic environment and their potential ecological riskshave drawn the domestic and oversea increasing concerns. Since the compounds are not fullyeliminated in the treatment processes now, the antibiotics and their metabolites are transported tothe aquatic environment via municipal Sewage Treatment Plants (STP).In our work, seven sulfonamide and three tetracycline representative common antibiotics areselected as main study objects. The analytical method is based on solid-phase extracted (SPE)with Oasis HLB cartridges and their subsequent quantification by high performance liquidchromatography (HPLC) using UV detection. The average recoveries are 80.7%-106% andquantification limits are 0.001-0.074μg/L. The raw and treated sewage were collected from 8sewage treatment plants in Guangzhou and Zhuhai, and analyzed. The concentrations in the rawand treated sewage are 3.553～19.156μg/L and 0.654～8.584μg/L, respectively. Generallyspeaking, the contaminations of antibiotics in Zhuhai are worse than those in Guangzhou. Theconcentrations of Sulfadimethozine(SDM) and Sulfadiazine(SD) in the raw sewage ofGuangzhou are higher than those in Zhuhai, while the concentrations of Sulfamerazine(SM1),Sulfamethazine(SM2) and tetracycline antibiotics in Guangzhou are reverse. The averageremoval efficiencies of Sulfadiazine(SD), Tetracycline(TC) and Chlortetracycline(CTC), andother antibiotics are 19.6%, more than 75%, and 42-63%, respectively. Comparing the removalefficiencies in each sewage treatment, AB treatment is the most effective and its removalefficiencies are more than 77%. Secondly, oxidation ditch and traditional activated sludgetreatment can remove a great mass of antimicrobial substances in municipal sewage. Othertreatments only can deal with one or two antimicrobials efficiently.