Efficacy of persulfate-based advanced oxidation process (US/PS/Fe₃O₄) for ciprofloxacin removal from aqueous solutions

Research evidence has shown that pollution of surface and underground waters is the leading sources of environmental and health-related problems. Disposed unused therapeutic drugs have been known to contaminate underground water and also offer drug resistance to infection-causing bacterial. This research seeks to evaluate the use of US/PS/Fe₃O₄ for the removal of ciprofloxacin (CIP-F) from aqueous solutions. The research also seeks to obtain the optimum set of conditions about which the highest removal efficiency of CIP-F is obtained by monitoring the used pH, Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles (NPs) concentration, PS concentration, CIP-F concentration, and contact time. The analysis was done using a UV–Vis spectrophotometer (Cecil model CE102) set at 280 nm. The result shows that a 98.43% removal efficiency is achievable after optimization if the separation parameters were set to the optimum conditions (pH = 5, CIP-F concentration = 200 mg/L, PS concentration = 0.15 mol/L, Fe₃O₄ concentration = 0.01 g/L and contact time = 45 min). The reaction was also observed to follow the pseudo-first-order reaction model. Since the results obtained show that US/PS/Fe₃O₄ can effectively and efficiently aid the surface adsorption of CIP-F from aqueous solutions, it is therefore recommended based on experimental findings that US/PS/Fe₃O₄ be used for removing CIP-F from effluents.