A novel and safe pharmaceutical effluent disposal protocol by glass-based Ag0 nanocomposite/oxidant degradation process and Ascorbic acid cooperation

Abstract

In this study, the glass based Ag0 nanocomposite was synthesized for the activation of persulfate ions as an oxidant. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) method and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) were applied to characterize the nanocomposite. Moreover, the effects of operational parameters on the removal of Cefixime (CFE) were investigated via S2O82−/Ag-NC/heat. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Decision Tree (DT) algorithms were expanded to optimize the results of the CFE removal process. The results revealed that in the optimal conditions (i.e., time of reaction = 90 min, temperature= 70 °C, [CFE]0 = 25 mg L−1, pH0 = 3.57, [K2S2O8]0 = 70 mM and Ag-NC dosage = 0.2 g), the CFE removal efficiency and the total organic carbon (TOC) removal were 100% and 94.9%, respectively. The kinetic study and LC-MS/MS analysis were then carried out to better understand the CFE decomposition process. Besides, the reusability test of Ag-NC displayed only 2.5% reduction of the CFE removal after five consecutive runs, thus showing that Ag-NC has ultra-high catalytic stability. Consequently, the use was made of Ascorbic Acid as a post-treatment process to reduce the eco-toxicity level of the effluent. Lemna minor (L. minor) survival confirmed the environmentally friendly oxidation process. Thus, all of the obtained results demonstrated that Ag-NC and the used procedures could contribute to increasing our understanding of their potential in engineering and environment sciences, as well as decreasing the operational costs.