Abstract
Water pollution by emerging pollutants such as pharmaceutical and personal care products is one of today’s biggest challenges. The presence of these emerging contaminants in water has raised increasing concern due to their frequent appearance and persistence in the aquatic ecosystem and threat to health and safety. The antidiabetic drug glimepiride, GPD, is among these compounds, and it possesses adverse effects on human health if not carefully administered. Several conventional processes were proposed for the elimination of these persistent contaminants, and adsorption is among them. Therefore, in this study, the adsorptive removal of GPD from water using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) supported on silica was explored on a fixed-bed column. The effects of bed-height, solution pH, and flow rate on the adsorptive removal of GPD were investigated. The obtained adsorption parameters using Sips, Langmuir, and Freundlich models were used to investigate the continuous adsorption. The results showed that the drug removal is improved with the increasing bed height; however, it decreased with the flow rate. The effect of pH indicated that the adsorption is significantly affected and increased in acidic medium. The convection-dispersion model coupled with Freundlich isotherm was developed and used to describe the adsorption breakthrough curves. The maximum adsorption capacity (qm) was 275.3 mg/g, and the axial dispersion coefficients were ranged between 3.5 and 9.0 × 105 m2/s. The spent adsorbent was successfully regenerated at high pH by flushing with NaOH.
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Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the Faculty of Science at An-Najah National University and the College of Arts and Sciences at Qatar University for supporting this research. The authors are thankful to the staff at the Central Lab Unit (CLU) at Qatar University for helping in performing the SEM/EDX analysis. We would like to acknowledge Carbon OxyTech Inc., Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for providing the multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT), for modeling the experimental data, and for providing their valuable feedback and materials. The authors are thankful to Dr. Amjad Shraim at Qatar University and Mr. Ismail Almanassra at Hamad Bin Khalifa University for their valuable consultations.
Funding
This research was funded by the Faculty of Science at An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine, general graduate students funding.
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IB led the project, designed the experiments, analyzed the data, and performed the mathematical modeling. OQ performed the experimental work and analyzed the results. AM participated in designing the experiments, analyzed the experimental data, and performed the mathematical modeling. MA provided the technical guidelines for the pharmaceuticals and participated in designing the experiments. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Highlights
• Rapid and efficient removal of the antidiabetic drug glimepiride by MWCNT
• The continuous adsorption breakthrough curve is described by a new convection–dispersion model.
• The adsorption efficiency increases as the solution becomes more acidic, in agreement with the ZPC of the MWCNT, and the pKa of the drug.
• The column bed was successfully regenerated through flushing with dilute NaOH.
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Badran, I., Qut, O., Manasrah, A.D. et al. Continuous adsorptive removal of glimepiride using multi-walled carbon nanotubes in fixed-bed column. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 14694–14706 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11679-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11679-y