Effect of initial concentration on sulfamethoxazole (SMX) removal using zinc oxide adsorbent coating

Abstract

Sulfamethoxazole (SMX) is an antibiotic that have been detected in significant quantities in sewage treatment plants in Malaysia and other countries. However, the conventional pharmaceutical treatment plants are not effective to reduce the concentrations of the compounds. Therefore, this study introduces an adsorbent coating formulated using zinc oxide and sepiolite as the adsorbent and additive, respectively and chitosan was used as the binder, which was then coated on the cotton cloth as the support via brushing technique. The batch adsorption studies have been done to study the effect of initial concentration on SMX removal. Result shows the percentage removal of SMX decreased from 94.7 to 65.3 %by increasing the initial concentration from 10 - 50 mg/L.