## 4 Removal of Pharmaceuticals during Wastewater Treatment
### Removal of Different Pharmaceuticals by Advanced Oxidation Processes
[23] showed the opposite in aqueous solution of 0.8 mmol/L; from their analysis, they noted that 3 h of photolysis process treatment resulted in 90% removal of NPX with just 5% of mineralization, but under the TiO\({}_{2}\) photocatalytic process, only 40% of removal and more than 20% mineralization resulted. As for antibiotics, many studies were observed in Table 3, [97; 101; 105; 106; 107; 108; 109; 110; 111; 120]; they all agree on the efficiency of the photocatalytic process for the removal of different antibiotics drugs such as Ciprofloxacin CIP, which was completely removed from urban wastewater even before 20 min of treatment when they added Fe\({}^{2+}\) and TiO\({}_{2}\) as catalysts in the wastewater treatment plants [101]. Additionally, this drug was eliminated under UVAlight by combining two catalysts: TiO\({}_{2}\) and ZnO [109]. In their study, they have shown the efficiency of this combination by removal of 300 \(\upmu\)g L\({}^{-1}\) of CIP from ultra-pure water in less than 6 min. In addition to that, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [107] noted that the removal of antibiotics drugs, amoxicillin, ampicillin, and cloxacillin, under UVA irradiation and zinc oxide was observed when the pH of solution achieved 11. For amoxicillin AMX, it was also analyzed by two other methods, which are identified by [PERSON] et al. [106]. They observed that AMX was completely removed after 90 min of treatment using carbon quantum dots modified potassium titanate nanotubes (CQDs/K\({}_{2}\)Ti\({}_{6}\)O\({}_{13}\)) under UV irradiation (between 365 and 385 nm), and [PERSON] et al. [110] reported a percentage of elimination of AMX and metronidazoleode of more than 70% after 120 min of treatment by UV/TiO\({}_{2}\) photocatalysis at pH medium. [PERSON] et al. [113] showed the importance of the photocatalyst process, mainly in the removal of furosemide and ranitidine drugs. In fact, in darkness and without photoreaction, the percentages of rejection were between 10% and 60% for furosemide and between 5% and 30% for ranitidine, but a decrease to 0 was observed in the presence of light, photocatalyst, and oxygen. Despite the high cost of this process, many researchers are adapting these methods because of their effectiveness in the removal of most pharmaceutical drugs: antibiotics, analgesics, NSAIDs, anticancer, beta-blockers, antiseptics, etc. (Table 3). [PERSON] et al. [103] identified the efficiency of the removal of two anticancer drugs, methotrexate and doxorubicin, in ultrapure water, reaching 100% using the UVA/TiO\({}_{2}\) system. [PERSON] et al. [114] reported the removal of propranolol in ultrapure water in 240 up to 81% at the solar plant and 94% at the laboratory. From these different studies, we can observe the performance of photocatalysis in degrading pharmaceuticals that is significant. This technique is also characterized by utilizing TiO\({}_{2}\), which is inexpensive, with low toxicity and high stability to light illumination, as well as its capacity to be regenerated several times without significantly losing its activity [115]. The antibiotic cloxacillin was also almost completely removed from a synthetic pharmaceutical wastewater using the combined TiO\({}_{2}\)/photo-Fenton reaction [116]. In addition, the use of a UV-A-LED-photo-Fenton reaction for the removal of antipyrine by [PERSON] et al. [117] showed a total degradation after 2.5 min and a 93% of mineralization after 60 min. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [105] have shown the efficiency of the photo-Fenton process for the degradation of tetracycline (TC) in WWTP effluent and surface water (Table 3). They have shown that total removal of TC drug was achieved after 1 min under black light radiation in the presence of Fe(NO\({}_{3}\))\({}_{3}\) for a concentration of 5.5 mg/L, while solar light irradiation favors ferroialxate for a 2 mg/L of concentration. In addition to the different methods of AOPs, ozone treatment enhances the removal of all drugs, including carbamazepine, where removals up to 96% are observed.