Abstract
Adsorption has been regarded as one of the most efficient and economic methods for the removal of antibiotics from aqueous solutions. In this work, different graphene-based magnetic nanocomposites using a modified solvothermal method were synthesized and employed to remove sulfadiazine (SDZ) from water. The adsorption capacity of the optimal magnetic reduced graphene oxide (MrGO) was approximately 3.24 times that of pure Fe3O4. After five repeated adsorption cycles, the removal rate of SDZ (100 μg/L) by MrGO nanocomposites was still around 89.3%, which was only about a 3% decrease compared to that in the first cycle. Mechanism investigations showed that both chemical and physical adsorption contributed to the removal of SDZ. The excellent adsorption performance and recyclability of MrGO nanocomposites could be attributed to their wonderful 3D interconnected petal-like structures. The MrGO with SDZ could be easily recollected by magnetic separation. The MrGO also exhibited excellent adsorption performance in the purification of real polluted water.
Highlights
Antibiotics, an important group of pharmaceuticals used in humans and animals, have caused significant concern in recent years due to their wide occurrence and resistance
With increasing content of Reduced graphene oxide (rGO), the corresponding peaks of the nanocomposites became increasingly obvious. These results reveal that the Fe3 O4 nanoparticles in the magnetic reduced graphene oxide (MrGO) nanocomposites were successfully deposited onto the rGO nanosheet
The MrGO nanocomposites were synthesized via a modified solvothermal method
Summary
Antibiotics, an important group of pharmaceuticals used in humans and animals, have caused significant concern in recent years due to their wide occurrence and resistance. Large numbers of studies have been carried out to develop treatment technologies. It is of great significance to study the adsorption process of SDZ on graphene-based materials. Due to the van der Waals force and π–π interactions between layers [18], free-standing rGO nanosheets are easy to stack and agglomerate, which decreases the specific surface area and adsorption capacity. To retain the inherent property of graphene, three-dimensional (3D) graphene was constructed [19,20] This kind of structure improved the performance of graphene to some extent, the separation and recycle of rGO emerges to be another important issue. The results from this work could help find an effective method to obtain magnetic nanocomposites with porous structures, avoiding the stacking and aggregation of rGO nanosheets
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