FLUOROQUINOLONES ANTIBIOTICS ADSORPTION ONTO POLYMER COATED MAGNETIC NANOPARTICULAR ACTIVATED CARBON

The present study investigated the adsorption of molecular fluoroquinolone (FLQ) from aqueous solution onto active carbon (AC), magnetic activated carbon (MagAC), styrene-butadiene styrene magnetic activated carbon (SBS/MagAC) and poly charbon magnetic activated carbon (PC/MagAC) as adsorbent materials. The process optimization was carried by investigating the effects of pH, temperature, solid-liquid ratio, adsorbent type and initial concentration of FLQ. The data showed that adsorption reached equilibrium in as little as one hour. The adsorption cacapcity was comparatively less at low pH values than at approximately pH 5.0. The results also showed that the polymer coated magnetic materials did not perform very well at high pH values. However, all the materials performed well at room temperature when the situation was examined in terms of kinetics. It was also observed that AC, SBS/MagAC and PC/MagAC are more effective than MagAC to remove FLQ from aqueous medium. The kinetic data support pseudo-second-order model (r2 ⩾ 0.95) but showed very poor fit for pseudo-first-order model (r2 ≤ 0.90). Intra-particle model also showed that there were two separate stages in sorption process, namely, external diffusion and the diffusion of inter-particle. Adsorption isotherms for all adsorbends were fitted to Langmuire models more effectively than Freundlich models (r2 ⩾ 0.98). Thermodynamicsparameters such as; free energy (ΔG0), enthalpy (ΔH0) and entropy (ΔS0) were also calculated. In conclusion, our results revealed that FLQ can be removed more easily from the aqueous medium by using magnetic and polymeric material.