Increasing human activity, including commercial and noncommercial use of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and agricultural products, has introduced new contaminants that can be challenging to remove with currently available technologies. Pharmaceuticals, in particular, can be especially challenging to remove from the water supply and can pose great harm to people and local ecosystems. Their highly stable nature makes their degradation with conventional water treatment techniques difficult, and studies have shown that even advanced treatment of water is unable to remove some compounds. As such, decontamination of water from pharmaceuticals requires the development of advanced technologies capable of being used in indirect and direct potable water reuse. In this review, we discuss pharmaceutical removal in indirect potable water treatment and how recent advancements in adsorption and photocatalysis technologies can be used for the decontamination of pharmaceutical-based emerging contaminants. For instance, new materials that incorporate graphene-based nanomaterials have been developed and shown to have increased adsorptive capabilities toward pharmaceuticals when compared with unmodified graphene. In addition, adsorbents have been incorporated in membrane technologies, and photocatalysts have been combined with magnetic material and coated on optical fibers improving their usability in water treatment. Advancements in photocatalytic material research have enabled the development of highly effective materials capable of degradation of a variety of pharmaceutical compounds and the development of visible-light photocatalysts. To understand how adsorbents and photocatalysts can be utilized in water treatment, we address the benefits and limitations associated with these technologies and their potential applicability in indirect potable water reuse plants.

日益增加的人类活动，包括药品，个人护理产品和农产品的商业和非商业用途，已经引入了新的污染物，而采用现有技术很难去除这些污染物。尤其是，从水源中去除药品尤其具有挑战性，并且可能对人和当地生态系统造成极大伤害。它们的高度稳定特性使其难以通过常规水处理技术降解，并且研究表明，即使对水进行深度处理也无法去除某些化合物。因此，从药品中去除水的污染需要开发能够用于间接和直接饮用水回用的先进技术。在这篇评论中 我们讨论了间接饮用水处理中的药物去除，以及吸附和光催化技术的最新进展如何用于对基于药物的新兴污染物进行净化。例如，已经开发出包含石墨烯基纳米材料的新材料，并且与未改性的石墨烯相比，新材料显示出对药物的吸附能力增强。另外，吸附剂已经被结合到膜技术中，光催化剂已经与磁性材料结合并涂覆在光纤上，从而提高了它们在水处理中的可用性。光催化材料研究的进步使得能够开发能够降解多种药物化合物的高效材料以及开发可见光光催化剂成为可能。为了了解吸附剂和光催化剂如何用于水处理中，我们解决了与这些技术相关的优势和局限性，以及它们在间接饮用水回用工厂中的潜在适用性。