Antibiotics Removal from Aqueous Solution and Pharmaceutical Wastewater by Adsorption Process: A Review

With the widespread use of antibiotics, pharmaceutical effluents containing antibiotics have recently attracted wide attentions since it has potential adverse effects. Although the injuriousness of antibiotics is not so intuitive like other environmental pollution, residues of the antibiotic drug have become a seriously ignored problem. The abuse of antibiotics can damage the immune function of animals, when again infected, and then they need more antibiotics to treat. In this review article the authors presented up to-date development on the application of adsorption in the removal of antibiotics from aqueous solution. This review article provides extensive literature information about antibiotics, its classification and toxicity, various treatment methods, and antibiotics adsorption characteristics by various adsorbents. The effectiveness of various adsorbents under different physicochemical process parameters and their comparative adsorption capacity towards antibiotics adsorption has also been presented. This review paper also includes the affective adsorption factors of antibiotics such as solution contact time, initial antibiotics concentration, adsorbent dosage, and temperature. The applicability of various adsorption thermodynamic models and isotherm models for antibiotics removal by wide range of adsorbents is also reported here.