Abstract
Medicine and pharmaceuticals are used to promote public health and quality of life. However, in recent years, pharmaceuticals and related molecules have become sources of increasing environmental issues. Water contamination is one of the most important environmental challenges today. Adsorption is one of the most successful strategies for pollutant removal in water treatment. Porosity, crystallinity, and other physicochemical variables can affect adsorption capacity. In recent years, several researchers have sought to blend biopolymers of varying properties to create a material with specific features for pharmaceutical adsorptive removal. For this study, the goal was to develop a novel, low-cost biopolymer-based nano adsorbents for the adsorption of beta-blockers, anticonvulsant, and sulfonamides from water. The foundation constituents of the nanocomposites were microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) and chitosan. Initially, a magnetic cellulose-chitosan hydrogel nanocomposite was synthesized briefly by weighing 1.35 g of FeCl36H2O (5 mmol) which was dissolved in 40 mL of ethylene glycol, then 3.6 g of CH3COONa sodium acetate and 1.0 g of polyethylene glycol were added. After stirring for 30 min, the mixture was autoclaved in a stainless-steel lined with Teflon (50 mL capacity) container. The autoclave was heated to 200 degrees Celsius for 16 hrs before being allowed to cool to room temperature. The resulting products were washed several times with ethanol and dried at 60 °C for 6 hrs. Finally, 10g MCC and 4 g Fe3O4 were dispersed in 100 mL of distilled water for 1 hour at 70 °C with constant stirring (300 rpm). The MCC solution was then treated with 0.75 M Mg(NO3)26H2O and 0.25 M Al(NO3)39H2O (Mg: Al = 3:1) and stirred for 2 hrs. By gradually adding NaOH, the pH of the solution was raised to 10. The magnetic MCC-LDH precipitate that resulted was aged for 24 hrs at 60 °C. Finally, using a magnetic decantation, the products were separated from the bulk solution, washed five times with distilled water, and dried overnight at 60 °C. The prepared hydrogel was used for the simultaneous adsorptive removal of (atenolol (ATN)) and propranolol (PRP) and an anticonvulsant (carbamazepine (CBZ)) and it demonstrated high adsorption efficacy for ATZ, PRP, and CBZ. The prepared magnetic cellulose-chitosan hydrogel nanocomposite had a BET area of 112 m2g -1 and showed up to 100 percent swelling in a swelling test. Secondly, the RSM model was used to predict the amount of chitosan and magnetic microcrystalline cellulose (MCC)-layered double hydroxide (LDH) required to synthesis a magnetic cellulose-layered double hydroxide-chitosan (MMCC-LDH-Chi) nanocomposite hydrogel with improved adsorption performance for the simultaneous removal of sulfonamides. The BET revealed that the surface areas of the materials increased with increasing amount of magnetic MCC-LDH. The surface areas of the materials ranged from 56-267 m2/g. The average pore sizes (5.67-41.2 nm) suggested that the synthesised materials were mesoporous in nature. During screening, the improved nanocomposite demonstrated a high affinity for removing sulfonamides. Finally, the improved MMCC-LDH-Chi removed (sulfanilamide (SLD), sulfamethoxazole (SMX), sulfamerazine (SMZ) and sulfathiazole (STZ)) with high efficiency. In the nanocomposites, cellulose and chitosan were used as a polymer matrix. TEM, SEM, FTIR, XRD, and TGA were used to characterize the nanocomposites. Each hydrogel's adsorption isotherms and kinetics were investigated. Under optimal adsorption parameters the percentage removal efficiencies were ranged from 98-99%. Furthermore, the adsorption capacities were 49, 45, 40, and 40 mg/g for SLD, SMX, SMZ and STZ, respectively.