L. Boithias, R. Marcé, V. Acuña, J. Aldekoa, V. Osorio, M. Petrović, A. Ginebreda, F. Francés, S. Pérez, S. Sabater 4th SCARCE International Conference 25‐26 November 2013, Cádiz, Spain Assessment of the water purification ecosystem service regarding in‐stream pharmaceutical residues: Exploring the GREAT‐ER model parameters based on data uncertainty
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L. Boithias, R. Marcé, V. Acuña, J. Aldekoa, V. Osorio, M. Petrović, A. Ginebreda, F. Francés, S. Pérez, S. Sabater
4th SCARCE International Conference25‐26 November 2013, Cádiz, Spain
Assessment of the water purification ecosystem service
regarding in‐stream pharmaceutical residues:
Exploring the GREAT‐ER model parameters
based on data uncertainty
Barcelona
Igualada
Manresa
Anoia river
Llobregat river
Cardener river
N
Drinking water treatment facilityWaste water treatment plants
Pharmaceuticals in the Llobregat basin
Boithias et al. SCARCE 20132
• 5000 km2
• High industrial, agricultural and urban activity: 60 WWTP
• PCP = 700 mm . At outlet, discharge is 19 m3 s‐1
• The basin supplies drinking water for the 3 million inhabitants Barcelona area
• Throughout the basin, discharge may be provided by the WWTP
• High concentrations of pollutants, including pharmaceuticals
• Water purification service from WWTP and ecosystems is a major issue
Modelling the fate of pharmaceuticals
• Pharmaceuticals are ubiquitous in densely urbanized areas
• Attenuation of pharmaceutical contamination in the aquatic environment depends on:
• Few studies about the in‐stream attenuation of pharmaceuticals
• Objective: assess the ability of the spatially explicit GREAT‐ER model to simulate the concentration of 13 pharmaceuticals in two contrasted hydrological conditions
Analgesic‐ 2 < RMSEmedian < 6‐ Underestimated during both low flow and high flow
Analgesic‐ 43 < RMSEmedian < 62‐ Underestimated during high flow and ovestimated during low flow
Discussion
• For some molecules, the simplest model is enough to describe the fate, when using the median of the available data– Non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs were well simulated– A simple statistical analysis showed that the RMSE was lower for
lower Henry low constants ‐> more volatilizable molecules
• Some molecules are badly simulated during low flow: REWWTPand RERivers may increase during low flow depending on the pharmaceutical concentration ‐> this was not simulated:
– future work: simulate 27 Med/Min/max combinations to check thisassumption
• Other uncertainty source : emissions may change spatially, but not depending on the hydrological conditions
Boithias et al. SCARCE 201314
Conclusions and future work
• Well simulated molecules could already be used to assess the water purification service, i.e. the contaminants removal, at basin scale
• Next step: run the 27 scenarios of Min/Max/Median combinations, to get more details about the effect of the hydrological conditions on the removal efficiencies
• Ongoing work: automatic sensitivity analysis and an automatic calibration (GREAT‐ER more complex tiers)