Evaluation of efficiency and capacity of thermal, chemical and ultrasonic regeneration of tetracycline exhausted activated carbon.

Emerging pollutants have received increasing attention because of their potential environmental risks. As conventional treatment processes are not able to completely remove emerging pollutants, such as drugs, for example, the adsorption process is considered a complementary treatment. However, after some time of use, the adsorbent solids used in this type of process become saturated and there may be a higher demand for replacement of these materials, resulting in a large amount of solid waste. In this context, the objective of this study was to evaluate regeneration techniques of adsorbent solid depleted with emerging tetracycline pollutant. For this, tests were performed using three regenerative methods - thermal, chemical and ultrasonic, where through them were analyzed the influence of temperature, type of solvent and sonification time, respectively. Virgin, saturated and regenerated solids were characterized by their physical structure, micro and mesopore distribution and scanning electron microscopy. For all techniques employed, the regeneration efficiency reached values ⁣⁣above 85%. Thermal treatments at 200°C, 100% methanol solution, 100% deionized water with 60 °C heating and ultrasonic treatment at 5 and 20 minutes were chosen as the most viable methods for the study of adsorption/desorption cycles. Compared to the others, the heat treatment at 200°C remained with consistent results until the sixth cycle, presenting a regenerative capacity of 90%. Therefore, it has been selected as the most suitable regenerative agent, ensuring that CAG can be regenerated and used repeatedly in the treatment of tetracycline contaminated waters.

Determination of optimal operating parameters for tetracycline removal by adsorption from synthetic and real aqueous solutions.

Among all emerging contaminants, pharmaceutical compounds as tetracycline (TC) can cause potential environmental impact in water quality. In this work, the removal of TC drug on activated carbon from aqueous solution was studied and the best operating parameters were obtained. In addition, a real aqueous matrix was enriched with TC and the optimized conditions were applied to study the adsorption process efficiency. For this, the influence of pH, contact time between phases and dosage of adsorbent solid was evaluated. The investigation of kinetics, equilibrium and thermodynamic was also performed. The adsorbent material was characterized by SEM analysis and N2 adsorption/desorption isotherms to confirm its properties. Batch experiments showed that the most suitable experimental conditions for adsorption in aqueous solution were: pH 4.0, contact time 90 min and dosage of adsorbent solid 30 g.L-1. Under these conditions, it was possible to obtain 92.7% of TC removal with predominance of a spontaneous, favorable and endothermic chemisorption process. Adsorption experiments with real aqueous matrix provided 99.4% TC removal. These results show the potential of adsorption as a wastewater treatment applied to remove emerging pollutants as TC from real aqueous contaminated water.