Wastewater caffeine

Thomas PM, Foster GD (2005) Tracking acidic pharmaceuticals, caffeine, and triclosan through TFIE wastewater treatment process. Environ Toxicol Chem 24(l) 25-30... 

Verenitch SS, Lowe CJ, Mazumder A (2006) Determination of acidic drugs and caffeine in municipal wastewaters and receiving waters by gas chromatography-ion trap tandem mass spectrometry. J Chromatogr A 1116 193-203... 

The INET contactors have also been applied to non-nuclear processes, such as the removal of a specific rare metal (yttrium) from other rare metals (Zhou et al., 2007), hydrocortisone from fermentation liquor (Zhou et al., 2006b), phenol from wastewater (Xu et al., 2006), and caffeine from coffee beans (Duan et al., 2006). As described by Zhou et al. (2007), the contactor rotor is driven by a motor that is not above the contactor. Instead, a belt connects the motor to the top of the rotor shaft. This design is possible because these materials are not radioactive, and hands-on maintenance is thus possible. 

Recent research has begun to characterize the presence of ECs in a variety of waste sources (e.g., wastewater treatment plants, onsite septic systems, etc.) to better understand their potential pathways into the environment. Although data on transformation products for emerging contaminants is more limited when compared to other compounds, such as pesticides, a growing number of methods to detect such transformation products are being developed and select compounds have been found in a variety of waste sources, including wastewater treatment plants [7,67,74-78], septic systems [13,79], landfills [80], and animal manure [81,82]. For example, in a study of waste from wastewater treatment plants [75] and septic systems [13] (Tables 2-3), 1,7-dimethylxanthine (caffeine metabolite), 4-nonylphenol diethoxylate and... 

Selected reaction monitoring is extremely selective for the analyte of interest. For example, we can monitor traces of caffeine in natural waters to detect contamination by domestic wastewater. The global daily average consumption of caffeine in Europe and North America is 200-400 mg per person, much of which ends up in sewage. If caffeine shows up in a municipal water supply, it probably migrated from wastewater. To measure parts per trillion levels of caffeine, 1 L of water was passed through a column containing 10 mL of adsorbent polystyrene beads that retain caffeine and a host of other... 

Buerge, I.J., Poiger, T., MuUer, M.D., and Buser, H.R. (2003) Caffeine, an anthropogenic marker for wastewater contamination of surface waters. Environmental Science and Technology... 

Markers of water pollution show the presence of pollution sources. These include herbicides indicative of agricultural runoff, fecal coliform bacteria that are characteristic of pollution from sewage, and pharmaceuticals, pharmaceutical metabolites, and even caffeine that show contamination by domestic wastewater. 

This early work was followed intermittently by a flurry of activity that intensified diuing the 1970s and 1980s, partly as a result of environmental concerns over the use of conventional solvents. Major commercial processes currently in use are the SCE of caffeine from coffee and tea, the SCE of spice aromas, and the fractionation and purification of polymers. Processes under investigation include the treatment of wastewaters, activated carbon regeneration, and the SCE of edible oils and therapeutic agents from plant materials. 

Although continuous processing of liquids is possible, it is restricted to liquids with low viscosity. Known industrial applications are the caffeine recovery from corresponding loaded CO2 streams (see Figure 8.10), processing of lipids, and the recovery of organic solvents from wastewater. 

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