Research on selected antibiotics removal from water through powder activated carbon adsorption

Jianguang Liu, Ruichao Xu, Chu

Abstract

The powdered activated carbon (PAC) adsorption to remove trace contaminant antibiotics from water was studied. The results showed that the PAC adsorption feature of selected antibiotics complied with Freundlich adsorption isotherm model. PAC has high performance in removing antibiotics in water. When the concentration of antibiotics in the water is about 489ng/L and the dosage of PAC is24mg/L, the removal rates of sulfamethoxazole, sulfadimidine, erythromycin, oxytetracycline and tetracycline through PAC adsorptionwere79.84%, 80.05%, 94.62%, 83.32% and 96.88% respectively.