Waste derived starch and activated carbon biocomposite hydrogel as a green and reusable adsorbent for tetracycline removal
Abstract
Tetracycline is an emerging environmental threat, as its presence in water may contribute to antibiotic resistance in microorganisms. In this study, starch and activated carbon were extracted from potato peels and subsequently modified via free-radical polymerization using acrylic acid to develop a novel, green composite hydrogel for efficient tetracycline removal. Various adsorption parameters were optimized using the Taguchi method, including initial contaminant concentration, pH, adsorbent dosage, and contact time. The optimal conditions for tetracycline adsorption by the starch-acrylic acid/activated carbon biocomposite hydrogel identified were an initial concentration of 10 mg/L, a pH of 7, an adsorbent dosage of 2.5 g/L, and a contact time of 80 min. The incorporation of activated carbon significantly enhanced the adsorption capacity from 29.58 mg/g (for the starch-acrylic acid hydrogel) to 52.63 mg/g (for the starch-acrylic acid/activated carbon biocomposite hydrogel). Adsorption equilibrium was best described by the Temkin isotherm model, while kinetic studies confirmed that the process follows the pseudo-second-order model for starch-acrylic acid/activated carbon biocomposite hydrogel. Additionally, thermodynamic evaluations indicated that the process was both spontaneous and exothermic. Despite a moderate loss in efficiency over 8 reuse cycles from 99.99% to 58.06%, the developed starch-acrylic acid/activated carbon biocomposite hydrogel demonstrates a highly…
Read the paper
Related studies
- The Matrisome: In Silico Definition and In Vivo Characterization by Proteomics of Normal and Tumor Extracellular Matrices
- The Escherichia coli MG1655 in silico metabolic genotype: Its definition, characteristics, and capabilities
- In silico pharmacology for drug discovery: methods for virtual ligand screening and profiling
- In silico prediction of splice-altering single nucleotide variants in the human genome
- In silico clinical trials: how computer simulation will transform the biomedical industry
- In silico optimization of a guava antimicrobial peptide enables combinatorial exploration for peptide design
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.