Adsorption removal and photocatalytic degradation of azithromycin from aqueous solution using PAC/Fe/Ag/Zn nanocomposite

The improper use of antibiotics and their discharge into the environment can have serious and hazardous consequences. The purpose of this research is to synthesize an activated carbon impregnated magnetite composite (PAC/Fe), prepare PAC/Fe/Ag/Zn nanocomposites, and innovate by simultaneously synthesizing two metals, zinc and silver, on magnetically activated carbon and check its ability to remove azithromycin antibiotic (AZT) from an aqueous solution via UV system. PAC/Fe/Ag/Zn nanocomposites were characterized by various techniques including XRD, FESEM, and EDX. A series of batch experiments were carried out under various experimental conditions such as pH of the solution (3–11), contact time (0–120 min), initial concentration of AZT (10–40 ppm), amount of PAC/Fe/Ag/Zn nano-absorbent (0.01–0.04 g/l), and recoverability and reuse. Some common isotherm models were used for the study of AZT adsorption removal and finding the best model. Also, kinetic studies of AZT removal were performed by fitting the experimental data on first-order and second-order models. In this system, under optimal conditions of pH = 9, 120 min with 0.04 g/l of PAC/Fe/Ag/Zn, 99.5% of 10 ppm AZT were degraded under UV-C irradiation. Furthermore, the obtained results of isotherm and kinetic studies revealed that Langmuir ( R 2 = 0.9336) isotherm model, and the pseudo-first-order kinetic model ( R 2 = 0.9826) had the highest correlation with the experimental data of AZT antibiotic adsorption. Finally, the reusability experiments showed that PAC/Fe/Ag/Zn nanocomposites have a high ability of antibiotic adsorption and high stability after four cycles of application (99.5 to 40%). Graphical abstract