Montmorillonite Nanoparticles Effectiveness in Removal of Amoxicillin from Water Solutions

Objectives: In this article, novel montmorillonite nanoparticles (MON-NP) evaluated in order to facilitatethe sorption of Amoxicillin (AMO) from aqueous solutions in batch operations. Methods: Batch experiments were performed to study the influence of various experimental parameters such as contact time, adsorbent dosage, initial concentration of the AMO and temperatures at fixed solution pH. The Langmuir, Freundlich and Dubnin-Randkovich (D-R) models were subjected to sorption data to estimate sorption capacity, intensity and energy. Results: The optimum conditions of sorption were found as follows: a sorbent amountof 0.8 g in L of AMO solution (10 mg/L), contact time 90 min atfixed pH and temperature 7 and 25 degrees C, respectively. To study the kinetics of removal process, three equations, i.e. Morris-Weber, Lagergren (pseudo first order) and pseudo second order were used. The AMO sorption process waswell described by the pseudo second order kinetic model. The maximum adsorption capacity (qe) from Langmuir isotherm model was determined to be 39.41 mg/g and for D-R isotherm was 32.47. Conclusion: The results indicate that MON-NP could be employed as a low-cost in wastewater treatment for the removal of AMO.