No abstract

The spread of organic pollutants in water spoils the environment, and among the best-known sorbents for removing organic compounds are carbonaceous materials. Sunflower seed waste (SFSW) was employed as a green and low-cost precursor to prepare carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) via pyrolysis, followed by a ball-milling process. The CNPs were treated with a nitric–sulfuric acid mixture (1:1) at 100 °C. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed a particle size range of 38 to 45 nm, and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area was 162.9 m2 g−1. The elemental analysis was performed using energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and the functional groups on the CNPs were examined with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Additionally, an X-ray diffractometer was employed to test the phase crystallinity of the prepared CNPs. The fabricated CNPs were used to adsorb ciprofloxacin (CFXN) and malachite green (MLG) from water. The experimentally obtained adsorption capacities for CFXN and MLG were 103.6 and 182.4 mg g−1, respectively. The kinetic investigation implied that the adsorption of both pollutants fitted the pseudo-first-order model, and the intraparticle diffusion step controlled the process. The equilibrium findings for CFXN and MLG sorption on the CNPs followed the Langmuir and the Fredulich isotherm models, respectively. It was concluded that both pollutants spontaneously adsorbed on the CNPs, with physisorption being the likely mechanism. Additionally, the FTIR analysis of the adsorbed CFXN showed the disappearance of some functional groups, suggesting a chemisorption contribution. The CNPs showed an excellent performance in removing CFXN and MLG from groundwater and seawater samples and possessed consistent efficiency during the recycle–reuse study. The application of CNPs to treat synthetically contaminated natural water samples indicated the complete remediation of polluted water using the ball-mill-fabricated CNPs.

Recently, analytical separation techniques have the potential toward green approaches to reduce the environmental impact. This study focuses on the development of an analytical method for the determination of paracetamol and chlorzoxazone in their pharmaceutical combination. The separation was achieved using a home-made capillary column (0.10 mm i.d. × 200 mm length) filled with porous cross-linked hexyl polymethacrylate as monolithic stationary phase. The method proved to be simple, fast, sensitive, efficient, cost-effective and green approach due to the combination of the amazing properties of a monolithic material and a miniaturized liquid chromatography, which would be considered as a step toward reducing the analytical costs and the environmental impact of chromatographic applications. Both components were detected using a 3-nL nano-UV cell fixed at 270 nm wavelength. The optimized mobile phase was composed of 1% aqueous formic acid solution and acetonitrile at 40:60 ratio, 1.0 μL/min flow rate, 4.0 nL injection volume and 50°C column temperature. Under the optimized conditions, paracetamol and chlorzoxazone have been separated in about 6.5 min with chromatographic resolution of 2.37. The prepared column and the analysis method was fully validated and compared with other reported works. All findings allow to conclude that the prepared column and proposed method are applicable for quality control and routine analysis of the two drugs.

Strenuous efforts have been employed to prepare zinc oxide (ZnO) with eco-friendly methods; however, few studies have reported the fabrication of ZnO using a sustainable procedure. In this study, spherical ZnO nanoparticles were successfully fabricated for photocatalysis applications using a simple and eco-friendly method using an arabinose sugar solution. The ZnO nanoparticles with a wurtzite structure were obtained by combining zinc nitrate and arabinose in water, followed by heating, evaporation, and calcinations at different annealing temperatures. The annealed ZnO photocatalysts were characterised via X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The findings revealed a hexagonal wurtzite structure and good crystallinity with crystallite size increasing from 18 to 31 nm by means of an increase in the annealing temperature. The photocatalytic performance was examined to determine the degradation of mix dye waste. The spherical ZnO nanoparticles showed mix pollutant degradation of 84 % in 25 min at 400 °C.