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. 2019 May 7;9(25):14143-14153.
doi: 10.1039/c9ra01271k.

Antibiotic removal by agricultural waste biochars with different forms of iron oxide

Yue Chen  1 , Jing Shi  1   2 , Qiong Du  1 , Haowen Zhang  1 , Yixin Cui  1
Affiliations

Antibiotic removal by agricultural waste biochars with different forms of iron oxide

Yue Chen et al. RSC Adv. .

Abstract

Pollution by antibiotics has become a serious threat to public health. In this study, agricultural waste, corn husk, in the form of biochar, was utilized for antibiotic removal from wastewater. Two kinds of iron-loaded biochars, impregnation-pyrolysis biochar (IP) and pyrolysis-impregnation biochar (PI), were synthesized to adsorb the typical antibiotics tetracycline (TC) and levofloxacin (LEV). PI contained amorphous hydrated iron oxide, whereas the major component of IP was γ-Fe2O3. Compared with IP, PI had a much higher adsorption capacity for both TC and LEV. This was because PI could provide more -OH, especially -OHads, to serve as the adsorption sites. In comparison with TC, -OH was prone to combine with LEV. FT-IR and XPS results indicated that the mechanisms of LEV adsorption included hydrogen bonding, F-replacement, electrostatic attraction and bridging bidentate complexation. TC adsorption may involve complexation, hydrogen bonding and electrostatic attraction.

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Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts to declare.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. The structures of LEV (a) and TC (b).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Procedure for the preparation of PI and IP.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3. XRD of IP (a) and PI (b).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4. Adsorption amounts at different pH values.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5. FT-IR spectra of IP (a), PI (b) before and after adsorption, FT-IR spectra of LEV and TC (c).
Fig. 6
Fig. 6. The adsorption amount in the single and competitive systems: (a) LEV adsorption amount by PI; (b) TC adsorption amount by PI; (c) LEV adsorption amount by IP; (d) TC adsorption amount by IP.
Fig. 7
Fig. 7. Possible adsorption mechanisms for LEV (a) and TC (b).
Fig. 8
Fig. 8. Reuse experiment results.
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