Photodegradation of Ibuprofen, Cetirizine, and Naproxen by PAN-MWCNT/TiO2-NH2 nanofiber membrane under UV light irradiation

Alaa Mohamed; Ahmed Salama; Walaa S Nasser; Abdusalam Uheida

doi:10.1186/s12302-018-0177-6

Photodegradation of Ibuprofen, Cetirizine, and Naproxen by PAN-MWCNT/TiO₂-NH₂ nanofiber membrane under UV light irradiation

Environ Sci Eur. 2018;30(1):47. doi: 10.1186/s12302-018-0177-6. Epub 2018 Dec 3.

Authors

Alaa Mohamed^{1

2}, Ahmed Salama³, Walaa S Nasser⁴, Abdusalam Uheida⁵

Affiliations

¹ 1Egypt Nanotechnology Center, EGNC, Cairo University, Giza, 12613 Egypt.
² 2Production Engineering and Printing Technology Department, Akhbar El Yom Academy, Giza, 12655 Egypt.
³ 3Department of Production Engineering and Manufacturing Technology, Modern Academy for Engineering and Technology In Maadi, Cairo, Egypt.
⁴ Research Institute of Medical Entomology, Giza, 12611 Egypt.
⁵ 5Department of Applied Physics, School of Engineering Sciences, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), 16440 Kista, Stockholm Sweden.

Abstract

Background: In this study, the photodegradation of three pharmaceuticals, namely Ibuprofen (IBP), Naproxen (NPX), and Cetirizine (CIZ) in aqueous media was investigated under UV irradiation. The photocatalyst used in this work consists of surface functionalized titanium dioxide (TiO₂-NH₂) nanoparticles grafted into Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)/multi-walled carbon nanotube composite nanofibers. Surface modification of the fabricated composite nanofibers was illustrated using XRD, FTIR, and SEM analyses.

Results: Sets of experiments were performed to study the effect of pharmaceuticals initial concentration (5-50 mg/L), solution pH (2-9), and irradiation time on the degradation efficiency. The results demonstrated that more than 99% degradation efficiency was obtained for IBP, CIZ, and NPX within 120, 40, and 25 min, respectively.

Conclusions: Comparatively, the photocatalytic degradation of pharmaceuticals using PAN-CNT/TiO₂-NH₂ composite nanofibers was much more efficient than with PAN/TiO₂-NH₂ composite nanofibers.

Keywords: Cetirizine; Composite nanofibers; Ibuprofen; Naproxen; Photocatalytic; UV-light.