Abstract

Tetracycline is one of the most widely used antibiotics that causes contamination of aqueous environments and has raised serious concern during the past few years. In this work, adsorption of tetracycline on a modified zeolite was studied through a batch system. Synthetic zeolite 13X was modified using Fe(III). The results show that the removal efficiency of tetracycline by modified zeolite has considerably increased. Different experiments were carried out in order to analyze the effect of parameters such as pH, initial concentration of tetracycline, time, etc. The results indicate that tetracycline adsorption on the zeolite strongly depends on the pH of the solution due to amphoteric functional groups of tetracycline and maximum adsorption capacity of tetracycline by modified zeolite with a pH of approximately 6. The Langmuir isotherm shows good agreement with the experimental data suggesting monolayer adsorption. Maximum adsorption capacity of the modified zeolite reached at the experiments is almost 200 mg/g. XRD, XRF and FTIR results confirm the existence of the Fe phase in the zeolite texture. Amide groups of TC were responsible for the complexation with Fe3+. Also, tetracycline removal was studied in a continuous column to simulate an industrial waste water process.

Highlights

  • Tetracyclines (TC) are a broad spectrum class of antibiotics and are widely used for veterinary and human health purposes [1]

  • Several physical and chemical degradation methods such as chemical oxidation, adsorption, membrane filtration, ozonation, photo-fenton, and bio-degradation methods such as activated sludge, membrane reactor, and fixed bed reactor treatment have been applied to many antibiotics including TC with the purpose of degrading them in environmental sources

  • No sharp and clear peaks attributed to iron oxide can be detected

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Summary

Introduction

Tetracyclines (TC) are a broad spectrum class of antibiotics and are widely used for veterinary and human health purposes [1]. Several physical and chemical degradation methods such as chemical oxidation, adsorption, membrane filtration, ozonation, photo-fenton, and bio-degradation methods such as activated sludge, membrane reactor, and fixed bed reactor treatment have been applied to many antibiotics including TC with the purpose of degrading them in environmental sources. These remediation technologies are highly condition-based (e.g., pH, and molar ratio) and potentially expensive based on the concentration of the contaminant present in the environmental source (antibiotic) that needs to be degraded [4,5,6,7,8,9]

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