The effectiveness of UV-based processes (UV and UV/H2O2) for the removal of pharmaceuticals in real
wastewater using bench-scale experiment setup with a treatment capacity of 10m3/daywas investigated.
Forty-one kinds of pharmaceuticals including 12 antibiotics and 10 analgesicswere detected in secondary
effluent used for testedwater. For UV process a good removal seems to be expected for just a fewpharmaceuticals
such as ketoprofen, diclofenac and antipyrine. Especially, the removal efficiencies of macrolide
antibiotics such as clarithromycin, erythromycin and azithromycin for UV alone processwere found to be
very low even by the introduction of considerable UV dose of 2768 mJ/cm2. For UV/H2O2 process, a 90%
removal efficiency could be accomplished in 39 pharmaceuticals at UV dose of 923 mJ/cm2, indicating
that it will be possible to reduce UV energy required for the effective pharmaceuticals removal by the
combination of H2O2 with UV process.