Pharmaceutical-Based Emerging Contaminants Removal from Aqueous Solution by Different Granular Activated Carbon-Based Adsorbents

The objective of this study is to investigate the removal of selected pharmaceuticals such as ibuprofen (IBP), diclofenac (DCF), and carbamazepine (CBZ) by activated carbon (AC) when they are present in the aqueous solution as an individual entity or as a mixture. The coconut (AC(Eco)) and lignite (AC(Darco)) derived ACs after and before the impregnation of cerium were used as the adsorbent. Batch experiments were carried out for assessing the removal efficiency under varying conditions. The removal efficiencies of those pharmaceuticals were in the range of 66.2-99.8%. In the case of IBP and DCF, the removal was found to decrease slightly by AC(Eco) and AC(Eco)-Ce when the mixture of pharmaceuticals was used as compared to individual pharmaceuticals. The sorption kinetics results indicated that IBP (for both AC(Eco) and AC(Darco)) and CBZ (AC(Eco)) were best fitted to the pseudo-first-order kinetics model, whereas the DCF (both for AC(Eco) and AC(Darco)) and CBZ (AC(Darco)) fits better to pseudo-second-order model. The outcome of the study indicates that selected ACs were found effective in removing IBP, DCF, and CBZ when they are present as an individual entity or as a mixture in the aqueous solution.