Adsorption and removal of ametryn using graphene oxide nano-sheets from farm waste water and optimization using response surface methodology

Water pollution is one of the most universal problems oppressing people throughout the world, while adsorption is the most widely used method to remove contamination from water. In this paper, we proposed graphene oxide as a suitable adsorbent for the removal of ametryn from Karoon River water, drainage and water obtained from washing of soil samples of sugarcane farm (Hakim Farabi Agro-industrial. Co. Khuzestan province, Iran). To this end, the concentration of ametryn was quantitatively measured by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The response surface methodology (RSM) was used for the optimization of the effects of four important parameters influencing the removal efficiency of the proposed method. Experimental and modeling results showed that graphene oxide effectively adsorbed ametryn with maximum sorption capacity of 47.2 mg g−1. The adsorption process with ametryn was found to be fitted to pseudo-second-order kinetic equation and the Langmuir adsorption isotherm model. Moreover, the experimental results indicated that GO had good adsorption ability for the removal of ametryn from water and soil samples.