article · Desalination and Water Treatment
Bio-silica nanoparticles were produced from rice husks, an agricultural solid waste material, to capture the antibiotic amoxicillin from liquid media. Analytical characterisation demonstrated that the synthesized nanoparticles feature a high surface area of 529.2 square metres per gram, a small pore radius of 1.32 nanometres, thermal stability, and particle sizes between 20 and 25 nanometres. Adsorption experiments conducted across different temperatures, acidity levels, contact times, and concentrations showed that the removal process is spontaneous and endothermic. The material achieved a maximum adsorption capacity of 99.8 milligrams per gram at 38 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, regeneration tests established that acetone serves as an effective desorbing agent with 97.1 percent efficiency, allowing the adsorbent to undergo six complete cycles of use with only a 7.1 percent reduction in performance.
Pharmaceutical pollutants such as antibiotics in water sources present significant ecological and public health challenges. Repurposing abundant agricultural residues like rice husks into high-capacity, durable adsorbents offers a dual benefit: it reduces solid waste accumulation while providing an efficient, recyclable solution for extracting hazardous medicinal compounds from contaminated water streams.
This process could enable lower-cost, bio-derived filtration media for industrial wastewater treatment facilities and pharmaceutical manufacturers handling effluent discharge. The findings reflect early-stage laboratory testing, having verified material synthesis, uptake kinetics, and reuse over six cycles in batch conditions. Advancing toward commercial use would require pilot-scale validation in continuous-flow systems and cost assessments against commercial activated carbons.
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The objective of the present study is to prepare bio silica nanoparticles (SN) from rice husks as a biomass agricultural solid waste material. The synthesized silica nanoparticle was investigated with different tools such as TGA, XRD, SEM, TEM, nitrogen gas adsorption, and FTIR. Adsorption of amoxicillin was studied under different application conditions such as the effect of dosage of adsorbent, medium acidity, time of shaking, initial amoxicillin concentration, and the effect of temperature. Characterization techniques showed that SN is characterized by a high surface area (529.2 m2/g), small pore radius (1.32 nm), thermal stability, and particle size within range of 20–25 nm as calculated from TEM analysis. Adsorption of amoxicillin onto SN followed PSO kinetic models and well fitted with Temkin, van ‘t Hoff, and Langmuir linear models with maximum adsorption capacity reached 99.8 mg/g at 38 °C. The adsorption process is endothermic and spontaneous, as shown by thermodynamic characteristics. Desorption and reusability studies confirmed that acetone is the most efficient desorbing agent with 97.1% desorption efficiency. While reusability of solid adsorbent after six cycles of adsorption and desorption of amoxicillin is reduced by only 7.1%.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.dwt.2024.100086
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