Removal of Amoxicillin Drug from Aqueous Solution by using Marble Powder Surface Activated by Several Acids

Abstract

In recent years, the problem of the removal drug from wastewater has become one of the most important global problems due to the accumulation of large quantities of drugs on the surface of the water, which causes a lack of penetration of sunlight into water contaminated with drug, and this leads to a reduction in aquatic life forms for all living organisms and also leads to problems large environmental impacts and many dangerous diseases for humans. An attempt was made to prepare an environmentally friendly, economical and available surface that has a high absorption capacity to remove the contaminants of pharmaceuticals such as amoxicillin (AMX) drug. In this study, waste material such as white marble was used as an absorbent material, and its adsorption properties were enhanced and activated by treating it with several acids (HCL, H2SO4, and HNO3). The prepared white marble before and after adsorption were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The influence of several parameters like contact time (5–120 minutes), initial concentration of drug (10–50 mg/L), adsorbent dosage (0.02–0.2 g), solution temperature (10–40oC), and pH (2–10) was estimated for adsorption method optimization. The equilibrium adsorption result was examined utilizing the isotherm Langmuir, and isotherm Freundlich models. The attained data indicated that, sorption was found to be fast, 84.44% within 1 hour.