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Dryad

Efficient removal of pharmaceuticals from water using graphene nanoplatelets as adsorbent

Cite this dataset

Rosli, Fatin Ahza et al. (2020). Efficient removal of pharmaceuticals from water using graphene nanoplatelets as adsorbent [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.qrfj6q5cv

Abstract

Recently, pharmaceutical pollutants in water emerge as global concern as they give threat to human health and environment. In this study, graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) were used to efficiently remove antibiotics sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and analgesic acetaminophen (ACM) as pharmaceutical pollutants from water by adsorption process. GNPs; C750, C300, M15, and M5 were characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, X-Ray diffraction and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller. The effects of several parameters; viz., solution pH, adsorbent amount, initial concentration and contact time were studied. The parameters were optimized by batch adsorption process and the maximum removal efficiency for both pharmaceuticals were 99%. The adsorption kinetics and isotherms model were employed, and the experimental data were best analysed with pseudo-second kinetic and Langmuir isotherm with maximum adsorption capacity (Qm) of 210.08 mg g-1 for sulfamethoxazole and 56.21 mg g-1 for acetaminophen. Regeneration study were applied using different eluents; 5% ethanol-deionized water 0.005 M NaOH and HCl. GNP C300 were able to remove most of both pollutants from environmental water samples. Molecular docking was used to simulate the adsorption mechanism of GNP C300 towards sulfamethoxazole and acetaminophen with free binding energy of -7.54 kcal mol-1 and -5.29 kcal mol-1 respectively which revealed adsorption occurred spontaneously.

Funding

Universiti Putra Malaysia, Award: UPM/700-2/1/GBP/2018/9598600