Roche AG had commissioned the company EnviroChemie to develop a new procedure for a new production facility in Mexico, which prevents the undesired release of ecotoxicologically contaminating drugs into the environment and eliminates pharmaceuticals in the wastewater directly at the point of origin, even before they enter the general sewage treatment plant. In the first step, the three different methods UV/H2O2 oxidation, ozone oxidation and adsorption on activated carbon were tested on a laboratory scale, and evaluated with regard to ecological and economical aspects. When comparing the validated procedures, ozonisation in this special case proved to be the most effective method, in order to efficiently destroy the active ingredients in the wastewater safely and completely. Based on these results, EnviroChemie designed a large-scale technical plant in the second step and implemented it.
The following article describes the project development and design of the Envochem plant for eliminating active ingredients from the wastewater of the production facility directly at the point of origin.