ABSTRACT
In recent years, the increasing detection of emerging pollutants (particularly antibiotics, such as sulfonamides) in agricultural soils and water bodies has raised growing concern about related environmental and health problems. In the current research, sulfadiazine (SDZ) adsorption was studied for three raw and chemically modified clays. The experiments were carried out for increasing doses of the antibiotic (0, 1, 5, 10, 20, and 40 µmol L-1) at ambient temperature and natural pH with a contact time of 24 h. The eventual fitting to Freundlich, Langmuir and Linear adsorption models, as well as residual concentrations of antibiotics after adsorption, was assessed. The results obtained showed that one of the clays (HJ1) adsorbed more SDZ (reaching 99.9 % when 40 µmol L-1 of SDZ were added) than the other clay materials, followed by the acid-activated AM clay (which reached 99.4 % for the same SDZ concentration added). The adsorption of SDZ followed a linear adsorption isotherm, suggesting that hydrophobic interactions, rather than cation exchange, played a significant role in SDZ retention. Concerning the adsorption data, the best adjustment corresponded to the Freundlich model. The highest Freundlich KF scores were obtained for the AM acid-treated and raw HJ1 clays (606.051 and 312.969 Ln µmol1-n kg-1, respectively). The Freundlich n parameter ranged between 0.047 and 1.506. Regarding desorption, the highest value corresponded to the AM clay, being generally <10 % for raw clays, <8 % for base-activated clays, and <6 % for acid-activated clays. Chemical modifications contributed to improve the adsorption capacity of the AM clay, especially when the highest concentrations of the antibiotic were added. The results of this research can be considered relevant as regard environmental and public health assessment since they estimate the feasibility of three Tunisian clays in SDZ removal from aqueous solutions.
