SIMULTANEOUS ADSORPTION OF COPER IONS AND ANTIBIOTICS CIPROFLOXACIN FROM WATER AT SEPIOLITE

Abstract

The wide use of antibiotics, the increase in chemical industry and traffic, as well as the medical industry resulted in formation of wastewater, which contains complexes of heavy metals and antibiotics. Earlier researches have shown that clay minerals had a significant large adsorption capacity for heavy metal ions, and recently examinations are focused on investigation of the possibility of treatment of water with presence of antibiotics and heavy metal ions. In this paper, the possibility of application of natural mineral sepolite for simultaneous removal of antibiotics of ciprofloxacin and copper ions from aqueous solutions. It was shown that at the initial pH of 6,0±0,1 presence of the copper ions (~ 20 mg/dm3) increased the adsorption capacity of ciprofloxacin onto sepiolite, while the presence of ciprofloxacin, had no significant influence on the removal capacity of Cu2+ ions. The results of adsorption isotherms indicated significant adsorption capacity for both, ciprofloxacin and Cu2+ ions, ie. it was shown that natural mineral sepiolite was very effective adsorbent for the simultaneous removal of ciprofloxacin and Cu2+ ions as a significant water pollutants.