Background & aim: The discharge of pharmaceutical effluent containing antibiotics into water resources is a great of concern associated with environmental pollution. In addition, conventional treatment systems are not capable of eliminating these antibiotics which commonly used in dealing with treatment of humans. Furthermore, over-consuming of antibiotics over the past few decades has forced researchers to find new techniques in order to deal with this environmental issues of great concern. In the present work, TiO₂ was employed as a catalyst in the non-homogenous catalytic ozonation process for removal of Ceftazide antibiotics from synthetic sewage.
Materials and Methods: This fundamental-practical study was conducted in a pilot scale. The magnetic TiO2 nano-sized particles were synthesized through a sol-gel method. The properties of magnetized titanium dioxide nanoparticles as catalyst were characterized using SEM, XRD and EDX. The effects of variables: pH, catalyst dose, reaction time, pollutant concentration on the performance of catalytic process were investigated. The residual concentration of Ceftazide was analyzed by a high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
Results: The findings of present study indicated that the high removal efficiency of Ceftazide occurs in alkaline conditions and a direct relation was observed between removal efficiency and pH. The catalyst dose of 2 g/l was determined as optimum dosage and the Ceftazide removal efficiency was improved by decreasing the initial concentration as time proceeded. The results showed that the removal of Ceftazide by this catalytic process are fitted with the first-order model.
Conclusion: The results show that the catalytic ozonation process with magnetized titanium dioxide nanoparticles has high efficiency for removal of Ceftazide from aqueous media. The catalytic ozonation process can be considered as an effective way to remove Ceftazide antibiotics from aqueous environment.