Removal of hazardous micropollutants from treated wastewater using cyclodextrin bead polymer – A pilot demonstration case

[Display omitted] •Cyclodextrin-based post treatment coupled with ecomashine technology has been demonstrated.•Beta-cyclodextrin polymer was used as sorbent in fluidization setup in pilot-plant scale experiment.•Treatment efficiency was followed by chemical and ecotoxilogical monitoring tools.•BCDP sorption technology efficiently removed selected wastewater micropollutants.•The short contact time between sorbent and pollutants makes the technology applicable in full-scale. Increasing amount of micropollutants such as drugs, cosmetics and nutritional supplements detected in surface waters represents increasing risk to humans and to the whole environment. These hazardous materials deriving mostly from wastewaters often cannot be effectively removed by conventional water treatment technologies due to their persistence. Some of the innovative technologies use specific sorbents for their removal. Cyclodextrin-based sorbents have already proved to be efficient in laboratory-scale experiments, but no pilot-plant scale demonstration has been performed so far. We are the first who applied this sorption-technology as a tertiary treatment in a pilot-plant scale operating, biomachine-type municipal wastewater treatment plant. As a result of the treatment 7 of 9 typical micropollutants (estradiol, ethinyl estradiol, estriol, diclofenac, ibuprofen, bisphenol A and cholesterol) were removed with >80% efficiency from effluent (reducing their concentration from ∼5 μg/L to