Efficient Heterogeneous Activation of Persulfate by Iron-Modified Biochar for Removal of Antibiotic from Aqueous Solution: A Case Study of Tetracycline Removal

Van-Truc Nguyen,Jih-Hsing Chang,Cheng-Di Dong,Yi-Li Lin,Chung-Hsin Wu,Tsing-Hai Wang,Chiu-Wen Chen,Thanh-Binh Nguyen,Chang-Mao Hung

doi:10.3390/catal9010049

Abstract

Waste reutilization is always highly desired in the environmental engineering and science community. In this study, Fe-SCG biochar was functionalized by modifying spent coffee grounds (SCG) with magnetite (Fe3+) at 700 °C and applied for the oxidative removal of tetracycline (TC) with the presence of persulfate (PS). The effects of pH, dosage of biochar and sodium persulfate and initial TC concentration on TC degradation were investigated in a batch system. Our results show that higher TC degradation efficiency was obtained at low pH, low initial TC concentration, and at high dosages of PS and biochar. The highest removal efficiency (96%) was achieved by Fe-SCG/PS under the conditions of pH = 2.0, [Fe-SCG] = 2.5 g/L, [PS] = 60 mM and [TC] = 1 mM. The proposed Fe-SCG catalyst could be a promising effective biochar for the remediation of other emerging organic contaminants.

Highlights

Antibiotics are one of the most widely used medicines in preventing microbial infections
1, there was an evident difference between the scanning electron microscope (SEM)
The results show that the equilibrium data of Fe-spent coffee ground (SCG) biochar could well fit both of the two models with high coefficient values (R2 > 0.95)

Summary

Introduction

Antibiotics are one of the most widely used medicines in preventing microbial infections. A great portion of antibiotic intake cannot be completely metabolized by humans and animals and released antibiotics cause serious environmental concerns [1]. Catalysts 2019, 9, 49 revealed several alarming facts that high TC concentration was detected in soil (86–199 μg/kg) [4], drinking water (87–97 ng/L) [5], surface water (5.7–8.7 ng/L), ground water (4.4–9.3 ng/L) [6], hospital wastewater (36–1612 ng/L) [7] and municipal wastewater (110–2353 ng/L) [6]. The occurrence of high concentrations of TC further poses an important public health issue, that is, the induction of antibiotic-resistant pathogens [8]. An effective and economical treatment solution for TC removal is highly desired by environmental scientists and engineers

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion