Removal of Drugs in Polluted Waters with Char Obtained by Pyrolysis of Hair Waste from the Tannery Process

Francisco Rodríguez; Carolina Montoya-Ruiz; Idoia Estiati; Juan F Saldarriaga

doi:10.1021/acsomega.0c02768

Removal of Drugs in Polluted Waters with Char Obtained by Pyrolysis of Hair Waste from the Tannery Process

ACS Omega. 2020 Sep 17;5(38):24389-24402. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c02768. eCollection 2020 Sep 29.

Authors

Francisco Rodríguez¹, Carolina Montoya-Ruiz², Idoia Estiati³, Juan F Saldarriaga¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Universidad de los Andes, Carrera 1Este #19A-40, Bogotá 111711, Colombia.
² Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Medellín Calle 59A #63-20, Medellín 050034, Colombia.
³ Department of Chemical Engineering, University of the Basque Country, P.O. Box 644, E48080 Bilbao, Spain.

Abstract

The presence and final destination of pharmaceutical compounds in waters constitute one of the emerging events in current environmental chemistry. Two widely consumed compounds have been evaluated in this study, amoxicillin (AMOX) and diclofenac (DFC), at a concentration of 200 mg L^-1. The presence of both in wastewater has been verified, generating problems in ecosystems and human health. Pyrolysis of hair waste from a tannery process was performed in a fixed-bed reactor. Char was obtained at different operating temperatures (300, 350, 400, and 450 °C), which underwent a characterization of heavy metals and elemental composition. An activation process was applied to the char obtained at 450 °C by means of physicochemical processes and with two chemical agents (KOH and K₂CO₃). For the removal of drugs, two separate tests were performed, one for 28 days and the other one for 4 h, to assess the efficiency and the percentage of removal. It was found that the char obtained at 450 °C is the one that removes most of both compounds: more than 90% of AMOX and more than 80% of DFC.