Mitigation of Diclofenac Pollution in Aqueous Media by Adsorption

Diclofenac is an acidic pharmaceutically active compound and one of the most frequently detected ones in wastewater. This review discusses the research progress and innovations made in recent years on the mitigation of diclofenac from aqueous media by adsorption. It was observed that activated carbon by intense physical activation, metal organic frameworks, and chitosan-cellulose polymeric adsorbents were the best adsorbents for diclofenac removal. Diclofenac sorption follows mainly pseudo-second order kinetics and was best fit to either Freundlich or Langmuir isotherms. Recent research trends involved the investigation of column and continuous experiments, competitive adsorption, and adsorption with photo-catalytic degradation. Whilst numerous types of adsorbents have been explored, there is still need for mechanistic studies.