Review
Adsorption of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs from aqueous solution using activated carbons: Review

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.12.073Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Adsorption of NSAIDs pollutants on activated carbons (ACs) has been reviewed.

  • Ibuprofen, ketoprofen, naproxen, and diclofenac drugs were tested.

  • High capacities of ACs towards diclofenac were reported compared to others.

  • Initial adsorbate concentration and ACs dose were of high effect on adsorption.

  • Future perspectives in this direction have been proposed.

Abstract

Pharmaceutical pollutants are of significant effect on the environment, so that their treatments have been addressed in many studies. Activated carbon (AC) adsorbent shows best attraction for these compounds due to its unique characteristics represented by high capacity and porosity. In this article, the adsorption performance of AC towards non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen, ketoprofen, naproxen, and diclofenac were reviewed. According to collected data, maximum adsorption capacities of 417, 25, 290, and 372 mg/g were obtained from Langmuir isotherm for these drugs, respectively. The values of 1/n for Freundlich isotherm were lower than unity for all studied drugs, confirming the nonlinear and favorable adsorption. In addition, kinetics data were well represented by the pseudo-second-order model and mechanism was not controlled by the pore diffusion step alone. AC adsorption demonstrated superior performance for all selected NSAIDs, thus being efficient technology for treatment of these pharmaceutical pollutants.

Introduction

Pharmaceuticals have been classified as one of the most significant groups of environmental pollutants. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) represent one of the widely used pharmaceuticals. These drugs treat human and animal diseases in terms of analgesic, anti-inflammatory, and antipyretic actions (Rodríguez-Álvarez et al., 2013). Consequently, NSAIDs are among the most detected drugs in the aquatic environment. Due to their unique properties of hydrophilicity and stability, NSAIDs can remain in the aqueous phase. According to the literature, they exist in surface waters at concentrations up to μg/l (Manzo et al., 2014).

Several methods have been applied for treatment of NSAIDs pollutants like photocatalytic degradation (Kaur et al., 2015, Kaur et al., 2016, Zhang et al., 2015a, Zhang et al., 2015b), micro extraction (Manzo et al., 2014, D'Archivio et al., 2016), oxidation (Rodríguez-Álvarez et al., 2013), biodegrada tion (Yu et al., 2011, Koumaki et al., 2017), chlorination (Noutsopoulos et al., 2015), bio filtration (Binellia et al., 2014), electrocoagulation–flotation (Liu et al., 2015), electrochemical oxidation (Feng et al., 2013), and adsorption (Suriyanon et al., 2015, Cuerda-Correa et al., 2010, Jung et al., 2015). Among these techniques, a simple and low-cost adsorption process shows excellent removal efficiency towards pharmaceuticals (Vona et al., 2015).

In general, ACs present more stable adsorption properties as compared to clays, polymers, zeolites, and graphene-based adsorbents (Kyzas et al., 2015). Thus, the treatment of antibiotics by AC adsorption technology has been reviewed by many articles (Ahmed et al., 2015, Yu et al., 2016, Michael et al., 2013, Le-Minh et al., 2010, Homem and Santos, 2011). The majority of studied pharmaceutical pollutants are antibiotics because of their presence with relatively high concentrations in wastewaters (Kyzas et al., 2015). Rare reviews with poor informations are found in literature which include AC adsorption treatment of non-antibiotic pharmaceuticals (Rivera-Utrilla et al., 2013, Wang and Wang, 2016). Thus, the present review focuses on application of AC for adsorptive removal of non-antibiotic pollutants represented by NSAIDs such as ibuprofen, ketoprofen, naproxen, and diclofenac from aqueous solutions. It includes in detail the adsorption behaviors of these drugs in terms of isotherms, kinetics, thermodynamics, and mechanisms along with the effects of adsorption variables on capacity of each drug.

Section snippets

Activated carbon

Activated carbon (AC) is defined as a carbonaceous solid with high micropores volume, well developed surface area and high adsorptive capacity (Hesas et al., 2013, Pezoti et al., 2016). Therefore, AC has been classified as an efficient adsorbent for water treatment and air pollution control (Flores-Cano et al., 2016, Nor et al., 2013). The suitable application of AC depends on its properties which vary with used raw precursor and preparation technique (Ahmed and Theydan, 2012a, Torrellas

Anti-inflammatory drugs

Pharmaceuticals or drugs are medicinal compounds used for treatment of human and animal diseases (Deng et al., 2016, Lin and Li, 2016). The common drugs are antibiotics, analgesics and anti-inflammatories, painkillers, and hormones (Sun et al., 2015, Li, 2014). These chemicals appear in effluents of hospitals, drug factories, and landfills (Lu et al., 2016, Nazari et al., 2016). Although the concentration of drugs in wastewaters is low, their continuous release to aquatic system cause an

Adsorption isotherms

The adsorbate concentration as a function of adsorbed amount at equilibrium is an important relation in determination of attraction nature for a given adsorption system. In addition, the analysis of equilibrium data is useful for design of adsorption unit. The widely used two-parameter isotherms such as Langmuir, 1916, Freundlich, 1906, Temkin (Temkin and Pyzhev, 1940), BET (Brunauer et al., 1938), and Dubinin-Radushkevich (Özcan et al., 2005); and three-parameter isotherms like Sips (1948) are

Adsorption kinetics

The adsorbed amounts versus contact time data are important to evaluate the rate and equilibrium time for an adsorption system. The analysis of kinetic data is useful for design and mechanism understand of adsorption units (Febrianto et al., 2009, Alberti et al., 2012). Many kinetic models have been established to study the adsorption of drugs (Table 2), namely pseudo-first order (Langergen and Svenska, 1898), pseudo-second order (Ho and Mckay, 1999), intra-particle diffusion (Weber and Morris,

Adsorption thermodynamics

Thermodynamic data for adsorption systems are collected by performing set of experiments at various temperatures. The basic thermodynamic equations in terms of changes in Gibbs free energy (ΔG), enthalpy (ΔH), and entropy (ΔS) are summarized in Table 2. The thermodynamic results of NSIDs adsorption onto various ACs are summarized in Table 5.

Dubey et al. (2010) evaluated adsorption thermodynamics of IBP on AC from Magwort leaves by H2SO4 chemical activation. The corresponding ΔG values were

Conclusions and future perspectives

The adsorption performance of ACs prepared by physical and chemical activations towards four important non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pharmaceuticals, namely ibuprofen, ketoprofen, naproxen, and diclofenac was reviewed. High adsorption performances were reported for ACs towards studied drugs. The effects of adsorption parameters on performance of AC towards drugs showed that initial drug concentration and AC dose have the greatest effect compared to solution pH and adsorption temperature.

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to thank university of Baghdad and chemical engineering department for their encouragement to publish this work.

References (116)

  • M.J. Ahmed et al.

    Microwave assisted preparation of microporous activated carbon from siris seed pods for adsorption of metronidazole antibiotic

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2013)
  • M.B. Ahmed et al.

    Adsorptive removal of antibiotics from water and wastewater: progress and challenges

    Sci. Total Environ.

    (2015)
  • M. Al-Ghouti et al.

    Thermodynamic behavior and the effect of temperature on the removal of dyes from aqueous solution using modified diatomite: a kinetic study

    J. Colloid Interf. Sci.

    (2005)
  • G. Alberti et al.

    Beyond the synthesis of novel solid phases: review on modeling of sorption phenomena

    Coord. Chem. Rev.

    (2012)
  • S. Álvarez-Torrellas et al.

    Comparative adsorption performance of ibuprofen and tetracycline from aqueous solution by carbonaceous materials

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2016)
  • R. Baccar et al.

    Removal of pharmaceutical compounds by activated carbon prepared from agricultural by-product

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2012)
  • N. Barka et al.

    Removal of methylene blue and eriochrome black T from aqueous solutions by biosorption on scolymus hispanicus L.: kinetics, equilibrium and thermodynamics

    J. Taiwan. Inst. Chem. Eng.

    (2011)
  • B.W. Bhadra et al.

    Adsorption of diclofenac sodium from water using oxidized activated carbon

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2016)
  • K.C. Bhainsa et al.

    Removal of copper ions by the filamentous fungus, Rhizopus oryzae from aqueous solution

    Bioresour. Technol.

    (2008)
  • B. Cagnon et al.

    Contributions of hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin to the mass and the porous properties of chars and steam activated carbons from various lignocellulosic precursors

    Bioresour. Technol.

    (2009)
  • A.L. Cazetta et al.

    Synthesis and application of N–S-doped mesoporous carbon obtained from nanocasting method using bone char as heteroatom precursor and template

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2016)
  • J.S. Cha et al.

    Production and utilization of biochar: a review

    J. Ind. Eng. Chem.

    (2016)
  • D. Chen et al.

    Pyrolysis polygeneration of pine nut shell: quality of pyrolysis products and study on the preparation of activated carbon from biochar

    Bioresour. Technol.

    (2016)
  • E.M. Cuerda-Correa et al.

    On the use of carbon blacks as potential low-cost adsorbents for the removal of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs from river water

    J. Hazard. Mater.

    (2010)
  • W. Deng et al.

    Occurrence and risk assessment of antibiotics in river water in Hong Kong

    Ecotoxicol. Environ. Saf.

    (2016)
  • S.P. Dubey et al.

    Artemisia vulgaris-derived mesoporous honeycomb-shaped activated carbon for ibuprofen adsorption

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2010)
  • A.A. D'Archivio et al.

    Optimisation by response surface methodology of microextraction bypacked sorbent of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs andultra-high performance liquid chromatography analysis of dialyzedsamples

    J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal.

    (2016)
  • J. Febrianto et al.

    Equilibrium and kinetic studies in adsorption of heavy metals using biosorbent: a summary of recent studies

    J. Hazard. Mater.

    (2009)
  • L. Feng et al.

    Removal of residual anti-inflammatory and analgesic pharmaceuticals from aqueous systems by electrochemical advanced oxidation processes. A review

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2013)
  • J.V. Flores-Cano et al.

    Overall adsorption rate of metronidazole, dimetridazole and diatrizoate on activated carbons prepared from coffee residues and almond shells

    J. Environ. Manag.

    (2016)
  • Y. Fu et al.

    Removal of Congo Red from an aqueous solution by fungus Aspergillus Niger

    Adv. Environ. Res.

    (2002)
  • G. Gereli et al.

    Equilibrium and kinetics for the sorption of promethazine hydrochloride onto K10 montmorillonite

    J. Colloid Interf. Sci.

    (2006)
  • M. Ghaedi et al.

    Removal of malachite green from aqueous solution by zinc oxide nanoparticle loaded on activated carbon: kinetics and isotherm study

    J. Ind. Eng. Chem.

    (2014)
  • R. Gong et al.

    Adsorption behavior of cationic dyes on citric acid esterifying wheat straw: kinetic and thermodynamic profile

    Desalination

    (2008)
  • H. Guedidi et al.

    The effects of the surface oxidation of activated carbon, the solution pH and the temperature on adsorption of ibuprofen

    Carbon

    (2013)
  • Y.S. Ho et al.

    Pseudo-second order model for sorption processes

    Process Biochem.

    (1999)
  • V. Homem et al.

    Degradation and removal methods of antibiotics from aqueous matrices- A review

    J. Environ. Manag.

    (2011)
  • O. Ioannidou et al.

    Agricultural residues as precursors for activated carbon production– a review

    Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev.

    (2007)
  • S. Jodeh et al.

    Adsorption of diclofenac from aqueous solution using Cyclamen persicum tubers based activated carbon (CTAC)

    J. Assoc. Arab. Univ. Basic Appl. Sci.

    (2016)
  • C. Jung et al.

    Competitive adsorption of selected non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs on activated biochars: experimental and molecular modeling study

    Chem. Eng. J.

    (2015)
  • E. Kacan

    Optimum BET surface areas for activated carbon produced from textile sewage sludges and its application as dye removal

    J. Environ. Manag.

    (2016)
  • S. Karaca et al.

    Kinetic modeling of liquid phase adsorption of phosphate on dolomite

    J. Colloid Interf. Sci.

    (2004)
  • A. Kaur et al.

    Sunlight-driven photocatalytic degradation of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug based on TiO2 quantum dots

    J. Colloid Interf. Sci.

    (2015)
  • A. Kaur et al.

    Heterogeneous photocatalytic studies of analgesic and non-steroidalanti-inflammatory drugs

    Appl. Catal. A Gen.

    (2016)
  • E. Koumaki et al.

    Environmental fate of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in riverwater/sediment systems

    J. Hazard. Mater.

    (2017)
  • G.Z. Kyzas et al.

    New approaches on the removal of pharmaceuticals from wastewaters with adsorbent materials

    J. Mol. Liq.

    (2015)
  • S. Larous et al.

    Adsorption of Diclofenac from aqueous solution using activated carbon prepared from olive stones

    Int. J. Hydrogen Energy

    (2016)
  • N. Le-Minh et al.

    Fate of antibiotics during municipal water recycling treatment processes

    Water Res.

    (2010)
  • W.C. Li

    Occurrence, sources, and fate of pharmaceuticals in aquatic environment and soil

    Environ. Pollut.

    (2014)
  • Y.-L. Lin et al.

    Removal of pharmaceuticals and personal care products by Eichhornia crassipe and Pistiastratiotes

    J. Taiwan Inst. Chem. Eng.

    (2016)
  • Cited by (203)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text