Comparison between two forms of granular activated carbon for the removal of pharmaceuticals from different waters

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of two forms of basic granular activated carbon (GAC), mineral (pH = 10.5) and vegetal (pH = 9), for the removal of three pharmaceuticals, as sulphamethoxazole (SMX), diclofenac (DCF) and 17β-estradiol (E2), from two different matrices: fortified distilled (2.4-3.0 mg L(-1) and pH from 5.5 to 6.5) and natural (∼1.0 mg L(-1) and pH from 7.1 to 7.2) water in a bench scale. The Rapid Small-Scale Column Test used to assess the ability of mineral and vegetal GAC on removal of such pharmaceuticals led to removal capacities varying from 14.9 to 23.5 mg g(-1) for E2, from 23.7 to 24.2 mg g(-1) for DCF and from 20.5 to 20.6 mg g(-1) for SMX. Removal efficiencies of 71%, 88% and 74% for DCF, SMX and E2, respectively, were obtained at breakthrough point when using mineral GAC, whereas for the vegetal GAC the figures were 76%, 77% and 65%, respectively. The carbon usage rate at the breakthrough point varied from 11.9 to 14.5 L g(-1) for mineral GAC and from 8.8 to 14.8 L g(-1) for vegetal GAC. Mineral CAG also exhibited the best performance when treating fortified natural water, since nearly complete removal was observed for all contaminants in the column operated for 22 h at a carbon usage rate of 2.9 L g(-1).

Antibiotics removal from aquatic environments: adsorption of enrofloxacin, trimethoprim, sulfadiazine, and amoxicillin on vegetal powdered activated carbon

“…Vegetal activated carbon can be produced from a variety of sources, including corncob, rice hulls, corn straw or date stones (Ahmed and Darweesh 2017;Liu et al 2017;Silva et al 2018;Peñafiel et al 2019). Among the various classification criteria apart from their origin, particle size is widely used to differentiate types of Activated Carbon (Lima et al 2016). Those with a larger particle size are classified as granular activated carbon (GAC), while smaller sizes are known as powdered activated carbon (PAC).…”

An Overview on the Development of Activated Carbon From Agricultural Waste Materials

“…These challenges lead to most PACs being used in batch modes, particularly in water treatment plants (Jaria et al, 2019). Several pollutants are currently successfully removed from water using the GAC as a water treatment material, including organic micro-pollutants (Brunner et al, 2019), pharmaceuticals (Lima et al, 2016), arsenic (Kalaruban et al, 2019), carcinogenic compounds (Myers et al, 2018), Heavy metals (Eeshwarasinghe et al, 2019), microplastics (Wang et al, 2020), colour and odour (Ziemba et al, 2020), and heavy metals . Figure 1 shows various utilization of AC.…”

“…The necessity to clean up our environment and cleanse our water necessitates the creation of innovative processes for making highly effective filter media and useful adsorbents. In water treatment and purification, Activated Carbon (AC) is widely used because adsorption processes like physisorption and/or chemisorption allow impurities to move from a liquid to the solid surface (Dai et al, 2020;Lima et al, 2016). Because of its well-developed porous structures, wide active surface area, and good mechanical properties, AC has been regarded as one of the most effective adsorbents (Lua et al, 2006).…”

Micropollutants removal with activated carbon : Adsorption and regeneration by biodegradation

“…Two different types of GAC were used in the experiments: AcquaSorb (Lima et al, 2015), given by Acids: log 𝐷𝐷 𝑂𝑂𝑂𝑂 = log 𝐾𝐾 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 − log (1 + 10 (pH−p𝐾𝐾𝐾𝐾) ) (2.5)…”