Antibiotics in Aquaculture Wastewater: Is It Feasible to Use a Photodegradation-Based Treatment for Their Removal?

Abstract

Aquacultures are a sector facing a huge development: farmers usually applying antibiotics to treat and/or prevent diseases. Consequently, effluents from aquaculture represent a source of antibiotics for receiving waters, where they pose a potential threat due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) induction. This has recently become a major concern and it is expectable that regulations on antibiotics’ discharge will be established in the near future. Therefore, it is urgent to develop treatments for their removal from wastewater. Among the different possibilities, photodegradation under solar radiation may be a sustainable option. Thus, this review aims at providing a survey on photolysis and photocatalysis in view of their application for the degradation of antibiotics from aquaculture wastewater. Experimental facts, factors affecting antibiotics’ removal and employed photocatalysts were hereby addressed. Moreover, gaps in this research area, as well as future challenges, were identified.

Keywords

• aquaculture industry
• bacterial resistance
• photolysis
• photocatalysis
• sustainable water treatments