Unfortunately, there is not an efficient process for removing pharmaceuticals some use biological treatment but it does not remove carbomizepine an others some others utilize activated carbon, it works with some PCCPs. Recently, researchers are using nano particles of manganese dioxide with some success but the process is still in lab scale.

depends on the target you want to achieve. if you want 100% removal of recalcitrant pharma products, then advance oxidation processes like UV, US, Ozone etc are feasible. bio and other conventional methods are not effective for recalcitrants..

The best solution (economical and environmental) for removing pharmaceutical product from wastewater will probably be a combination of biological and Chemical / Physical treatment.

For the biology you will need a process that will assure that you can have slow growing bacteria or even mushrooms selected. This will typically be either Biofilm based or MBR reactors. Since there will some remaining non-degraded substances some kind of Chemical oxidation will be the next step can be O3, H2O2, UV or combinations, but since we are after biology the dosing will be reduced. Since there after this treatment will be a risk of having created even more toxic compounds a combination of recycling back to the biology and adsorption on carbon will be next stage and after this you need to assure that no TSS will escape from this last treatment stage.

There are not any biological treatment conditions that can ensure biodegradation of all pharmaceuticals. My impression is that anaerobic treatment cannot remove as many pharmaceuticals as aerobic processes. If one requires complete removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater a polishing step after the biological treatment is needed. Ozonation seems to be the most preferred technology and some use powder activated carbon. A few use granular activated carbon columns but this is quite impractical.

The effectiveness of aerobic processes to remove pharmaceuticals seems mainly to depend on the presence of slow growing bacteria. Such are selected for in traditional treatment plants that are optimized for complete nitrogen removal (nitrification-denitrification) which is achieved by operating with a high sludge age in activated sludge or incorporating biofilm in the treatment process.

Suspended biofilm seems to be the type of biological wastewater treatment which achieves the best removal of pharmaceuticals. There is ability to degrade some pharmaceuticals that other processes cannot degrade and the degradation activity in the biomass is generally higher than in any other type of biological treatment.

Article Suspended biofilm carrier and activated sludge removal of ac...

Article Removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewater by biological pro...

Article Investigating the fate of iodinated X-ray contrast media ioh...

Article Can those organic micro-pollutants that are recalcitrant in ...

Article Biodegradation of pharmaceuticals in hospital wastewater by ...

Conference Paper Biodegradation of pharmaceuticals from hospital wastewater i...

 For the future, I think bioaugmentation of some specialised bacterial or fungal strains into suspended or attached processes can be more efficient for removal of pharmaceuticals.  

Thank you all for your in put, I really appreciate it. 

Combination of Biological processes (aerobic) plus Activated carbon can be a good choice. If you want, I can send you few papers about it. 

all answers are helpful and right.

I agree that anaerobic digestion is not suitable for pharmaceuticals wastewater treatment, since the hydrolysis is the rate limiting step and the most difficult one in the degradation.

if you combine biological method with chemical method you can achieve your goal 

Thanks a lot, Mahdi please send me the papers that'll be even more helpful.

GAC process or Ion exchange membrane process are the best in effectiveness. But you need to consider how much you want the process econamic.

You can consider the bioelectrochemical treatment (BET) for the pharamaceutical wastewaters. The complex reactions that prevails in the BET systems have chances to degrade more pharma pollutants than anaerobic digestion.

See the below links

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257174132_Electrogenic_activity_and_electron_losses_under_increasing_organic_load_of_recalcitrant_pharmaceutical_wastewater

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41012439_Bio-electrochemical_treatment_of_distillery_wastewater_in_microbial_fuel_cell_facilitating_decolorization_and_desalination_along_with_power_generation

Article Electrogenic activity and electron losses under increasing o...

Article Bio-Electrochemical Treatment of Distillery Wastewater in Mi...

 Thank you Gunda.

Use UV and TiO2 for ibuprofen

Thank you Grzegorz

Grzegorz. Ibuprofen is very easily biodegradable. Typically we see >98% removal in classic activated sludge treatment plants.

Besides ibuprofen is a mild painkiller, not an antiviral drug.