Nano based photocatalytic degradation of pharmaceuticals

The removal of emerging contaminants from wastewater is urgently required and even more necessary for wastewater reuse. Since conventional WWTPs are not designed to treat water polluted with pharmaceuticals present at trace levels, the applied treatments are mostly ineffective in their removal. Therefore the use of more efficient processes for removing or improving the biodegradability of these compounds has become necessary. Among several advanced oxidation process, nano based photocatalytic processes represent a challenging alternative for pharmaceuticals removal due to its capacity to utilize the solar radiation as the light source, thus reducing significantly electric power required and therefore saving treatment costs and to operate without pH adjustment. This chapter is aimed at describing the state of the art in the heterogeneous photocatalytic degradation of pharmaceuticals using different nano particles (NPs).