Abstract

Environmental requirements are becoming of great importance in today´s society since there is an increased interest in the industrial use of renewable resources. For this reason, the objective of the work presented was to examine and compare several natural, commercial or even waste products in diclofenac uptake, using synthetic water solutions in laboratory measurements. Diclofenac belongs to a class of drugs that provides analgesic, antipyretic and anti-inflammatory effects. To date, more than 200 different pharmaceuticals alone have been reported in river waters globally. According to the monitoring provided by the national water authorities and researchers, consumption of pharmaceuticals in the Czech and Slovak Republics are among the highest in Europe. According to our research, the results of the most effective adsorbents in diclofenac uptake from aqueous solutions were products in the following order: Chezacarb, with a capacity nearly 300 mg/g, Peatsorb CB18, with a capacity close to 250 mg/g, the German Silcarbon and the commercial product KlinoCarb, from the company Zeocem, with a capacity of ca. 200 mg/g. The domestic product KlinoCarb, which proved to have sufficiently high adsorption towards diclofenac, including a favourable price, was characterized by 1H-13C CP MAS NMR, Raman spectroscopy, XRD, and moreover, as with the other materials studied, by the SEM and S(BET) methods.

Keywords: Pharmaceutical, diclofenac, peat, clinoptilolite tuff, activated carbon, chezacarb, clays, cellulose, removal efficiency.

Graphical Abstract