Adsorption of Amoxicillin Antibiotic from Pharmaceutical Wastewater by Activated Carbon Prepared from Azolla filiculoides
Davoud Balarak
Health Promotion Research Center, Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran.
Ferdos Kord Mostafapour
Health Promotion Research Center, Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran.
Hamideh Akbari
Health Promotion Research Center, Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, Zahedan, Iran.
Ali Joghtaei *
Student Research Committee, Qom University of Medical Sciences, Qom, Iran.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
The Batch adsorption experiments were investigated for the adsorption of Amoxicillin (AMO) antibiotic on activated carbon prepared from Azolla filiculoides (ACAF). This study is influenced by different parameters such as ACAF dose, initial AMO dose and reaction time. The experimental results indicated that the whenever ACAF amount increased from 0.15 to 0.60 g/L at initial AMO concentration 100 mg/L, removal percentage of AMO increased from 49% to 90%. The AMO removal was decreased with an increase in the initial AMO dose.
The experimental isotherms and kinetic data were analyzed with three types of kinetics (First-Order, second order kinetic and Intraparticle diffusion) and four types of isotherms (Freundlich, Langmuir, Temkin and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) and the results showed that biosorption data were fitted well with the pseudo-second order kinetic and Langmuir isotherm model. The value of Free energy of adsorption (E) obtained from D-R isotherm was 5.95 KJ/mol, which represents the physical adsorption of AMO on ACAF. All the finding showed that activated carbon prepared from Azolla filiculoides, a available and abundant biosorbent, could be used for the removal of AMO antibiotics from aqueous environments
Keywords: Adsorption, amoxicillin, Azolla filiculoides, isotherms, kinetics.