Adsorption of azithromycin antibiotic from water onto biochar derived from Terminalia chebula and sugarcane bagasse

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the present study, Terminalia chebula biomass was utilized to produce biochar. T. chebula-derived biochar (CBC) was characterized, evaluated as an adsorbent to remove azithromycin from the water, and compared with sugarcane bagasse-derived biochar (BBC). The effects of different environmental parameters on the adsorption capacity of the biochar were studied by response surface methodology. The adsorption for CBC after optimization increased by 43.65%, and for BBC it increased by 51.99%. The maximum adsorption capacities (qm) for CBC and BBC were found to be 21.36 and 17.95 mg/g, respectively. Various adsorption isotherm models were also studied to confirm the adsorption capacity. The results suggest that the Langmuir model fitted best among the tested models with respect to high correlation coefficients in both cases (R2, 0.886 for CBC and 0.872 for BBC). The nonlinear pseudo-first-order kinetics was a better fit for the adsorption experiment data in both cases. Furthermore, it can be concluded that both CBC and BBC are fairly effective in treating wastewater with high antibiotic content after optimization.