Facile Fabrication of Novel NiFe₂O₄@Carbon Composites for Enhanced Adsorption of Emergent Antibiotics

Water purification is becoming one of the most pertinent environmental issues throughout the world. Among common types of water pollution involving heavy metals, pharmaceutical drugs, textile dyes, personal care products, and other persistent organic pollutants, the pollution of antibiotic drugs is increasingly emerging due to their adverse effects on microorganisms, aquatic animals, and human health. Therefore, the treatment of such contaminants is very necessary to reduce the concentration of antibiotic pollutants to permissible levels prior to discharge. Herein, we report the use of NiFe₂O₄@C composites from a bimetallic-based metal-organic framework Ni-MIL-88B(Fe) for removal of ciprofloxacin (CFX) and tetracycline (TCC). The effect of production temperatures (600-900 °C), solution pH (2-10), NiFe₂O₄@C dose (0.05-0.2 g/L), concentration of antibiotics (10-60 mg/L), and uptake time (0-480 min) was investigated systematically. Response surface methodology and central composite design were applied for quadratic models to discover optimum conditions of antibiotic adsorption. With high coefficients of determination (R² = 0.9640-0.9713), the proposed models were significant statistically. Under proposed optimum conditions, the adsorption capacity for CFX and TCC were found at 256.244, and 105.38 mg/g, respectively. Recyclability study was employed and found that NiFe₂O₄@C-900 could be reused for up to three cycles, offering the potential of this composite as a good adsorbent for removal of emergent antibiotics.