Evaluation of two bioadsorbents for removing paracetamol from aqueous media

Abstract

The frequent contamination of water resources with drugs comprises one the most important environmental problems. In order to avoid serious disturbances for aquatic life, efficient and economically viable procedures should be developed for removing common pollutants, as paracetamol. From these considerations, the present work evaluated the efficiency of sugar cane bagasse (SCB) and vegetable sponge (VS), two natural adsorbents commonly found in Brazil, for retaining paracetamol molecules dispersed in aqueous solutions. Thus, systems composed of glass columns and peristaltic pumps were optimized and, for pH, the best value was 7.0. After optimisation, adsorption isotherms were built and it was possible to calculate the MACF values for SCB (120.5 µg/g) and VS (37.5 µg/g). Additionally, real matrices of pretreated water, from a municipal plant for water catchment, were enriched with paracetamol at 5 µM and passed through glass columns packed with SCB, VS and activated carbon (AC). The results showed that SCB was more attractive than AC in terms of price and efficiency (60% against 45% adsorption, respectively), while VS was responsible for removing 40% of paracetamol dissolved in the enriched water samples. Thus, the proposed natural adsorbents can be classified as viable materials to remove paracetamol from water used for human consumption.

Efficient adsorptive removal of paracetamol and thiazolyl blue from polluted water onto biosynthesized copper oxide nanoparticles

“…This could be due to the stronger electrostatic interaction mechanisms involved in the uptake of the dye species in comparison to the weaker H-bonding and Van der Waals forces predominant in paracetamol adsorption. Moreover, the adsorption of paracetamol on CuONPs is higher than that obtained for other efficient adsorbents like sugar cane bagasse (0.121 mg/g) 60 , metal–organic-framework-MIL type (1.87 mg/g) 61 , activated carbon (43.5 mg/g) 62 and acid modified clay (43.92 mg/g) 20 . Similarly, the uptake of thiazolyl blue on the CuONPs was higher than 48.80 mg/g reported for American sycamore derived biochar 14 .…”

Chemically Modified Biosorbents and Their Role in the Removal of Emerging Pharmaceutical Waste in the Water System

“…As shown in Table 2, the use of organic solvent after pyrolysis of pine wood chips removed substances that may have leached from the biosorbent into treated water [63]. Similarly, use of water (H 2 O) in the pretreatment of sugar cane bagasse and vegetable sponge before the treatment of water contaminated with paracetamol also removed substances that might have interfered with the use of the biosorbents [65]. Use of alkaline in chemical modification of biosorbents showed better adsorption capacity when compared with other methods.…”

Adsorption of cadmium in vegetable sponge (Luffa cylindrica)

“…Diverse studies have explored the use of L. cylindrica as an adsorbent for removal of cationic surfactants (Ye et al, 2013), acetaminophen (Ribeiro et al, 2011), dyes (Demir et al, 2008;Altinisik et al, 2010), textile dyes (Oliveira et al, 2011) and phenol (Henini et al, 2012).…”