RESUMO
Pharmaceuticals are acknowledged as emerging contaminants in water resources. The concentration of pharmaceutical compounds in the environment has increased due to the rapid development of the pharmaceutical industry, the increasing use of human and veterinary drugs, and the ineffectiveness of conventional technologies to remove pharmaceutical compounds from water. The application of biomaterials derived from renewable resources in emerging pollutant removal techniques constitutes a new research direction in the field. In this context, the article reviews the literature on pharmaceutical removal from water sources using microbial biomass and natural polymers in biosorption or biodegradation processes. Microorganisms, in their active or inactive form, natural polymers and biocomposites based on inorganic materials, as well as microbial biomass immobilized or encapsulated in polymer matrix, were analyzed in this work. The review examines the benefits, limitations, and drawbacks of employing these biomaterials, as well as the prospects for future research and industrial implementation. From these points of view, current trends in the field are clearly reviewed. Finally, this study demonstrated how biocomposites made of natural polymers and microbial biomass suggest a viable adsorbent biomaterial for reducing environmental pollution that is also efficient, inexpensive, and sustainable.
RESUMO
Cephalexin (CPX) is recognized as a water pollutant, and it has been listed in a number of countries with a risk factor greater than one. Herein, the present work focused on the synthesis, characterization and biosorption capacity evaluation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae immobilized in calcium alginate as a biosorbent to remove CPX from aqueous solutions. Biosorbent was characterized by SEM and FTIR techniques. Batch biosorption experiments were conducted in order to evaluate the effect of the initial pH, biosorbent dose and CPX initial concentration. The removal efficiency, in considered optimal conditions (pH = 4, CPX initial concentration = 30 mg/L, biosorbent dose = 1 g/L) was 86.23%. CPX biosorption was found to follow the pseudo-second-order kinetics. The equilibrium biosorption data were a good fit for the Langmuir model with correlation coefficient of 0.9814 and maximum biosorption capacity was 94.34 mg/g. This study showed that the synthesized biosorbent by immobilization technique is a low-cost one, easy to obtain and handle, eco-friendly, with high feasibility to remove CPX antibiotic from aqueous solution. The findings of this study indicate that the biosorbents based on microorganisms immobilized on natural polymers have the potential to be applied in the treatment of wastewater.
