Reigning technologies and their challenges for antibiotics removal

Abstract

There has been an increase in demand for antibiotics due to the rapid growth of population. Antibiotics have been extensively and efficiently used in human, veterinary medicines, and several other purposes. Their potential benefits were recognized to increase the production of agriculture, animal husbandry, and aquaculture and to promote the growth of livestock. This increasing demand for antibiotics leads to their presence in the environment as contaminants, and hence, it results as a major source of contaminant. The long-term persistence of antibiotics residues in the environment cause severe effects on the various environmental components like human life, aquatic life, flora and fauna, the ecology of the compartment, etc. Hence, the removal of antibiotics contaminants is very important. There is a different method which can be used to remove antibiotics contaminants from water, like conventional and advanced treatment, sorption techniques, membrane processes, and ecological processes like constructed wetlands, integrated constructed wetland, etc. But there are major challenges in the removal of antibiotics contaminants from water because they are highly polar and have very low concentration, their no standard permissible limits defined by any organization in the world (as per the author review). This review gives an overview of antibiotics removal technologies and associated challenges.