Remoção de ciprofloxacina em coluna de leito fixo empacotada com resina de troca iônica

Abstract

The incidence of new diseases demands the fabrication of highly resistant and efficient pharmaceutical compounds for human and animal health. This aspect, along with the inadequate treatment of wastes generated by this activity, damages the environment and may consequently affect the population. In this sense, the objective of this study was to evaluate the removal of ciprofloxacin drug (CIP) of aqueous solutions by using the cationic resin SupergelTM SGC650H packed in a fixed bed column. Therefore, the characterization of the resin was performed by techniques of gas helium pycnometer, nitrogen physisorption, X-ray sedimentometry, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and point of zero charge (pHPZC). Initially, closed system and batch experiments were conducted to evaluate the effect of solution pHinitial. Afterwards, equilibrium experiments were performed. Finally, it was obtained the breakthrough curves in fixed bed in different volumetric flow rates and heights of the bed, defined by a central composite experimental design (CCD) and by using phenomenological mathematical modeling. The characterization demonstrated a low amount of pores on the structure of the resin and the analysis of pHPZC indicated that the point of zero charge of the resin was 2.68. The pH tests showed that the higher CIP removal capacity was achieved at pH values below 6. In the analysis of the equilibrium results, it was verified that the Langmuir model showed the best fit to the experimental data obtained in a closed and batch system, providing the values of 510.64 mg g-1 and 1.93 L mg-1 to qmáx and bL estimated parameters, respectively. In the fixed bed column tests, the maximum efficiency of the column as a function of the studied operational variables was obtained for volumetric flow rate of 3.8 cm3 min-1 and bed height of 15.2 cm (81,5%). In addition, it was observed that the kinetic model that considers the adsorption step on the surface (AS) as rate-limiting step of the process satisfactorily described the results obtained in column. In general, the work was able to identify a high removal capacity the ciprofloxacin drug by using the SGC650H resin. Finally, the study presented satisfactory results in the prediction of column efficiency from the phenomenological mathematical modeling used. With this, a new perspective is observed in the treatment of this drug compound and the possible application of the large-scale method.