Evaluation of activated carbon obtained from olive stones for the removal of sertraline from waters
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The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial
support through national funds FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC) to CIMO (UIDB/00690/2020, UIDP/00690/2020
and EXPL2021CIMO_05 -REMPHARM) and SusTEC (LA/P/0007/2021).
The presence of pharmaceutical drugs, their metabolites and degradation products in the
environment requires significant research and monitoring studies to assess the potential
risks to human health and to the ecosystem. Due to the extremely low concentrations of
these chemicals in the environment in the removal
processes must be optimized in order to make them easier, quicker, less expensive, and
more environmentally friendly than traditional techniques [1]. Many of these substances,
including hormones, antidepressants, analgesics, antibiotics, and anti-inflammatories,
among others, are heavily medical prescribed around the world to treat the most prevalent
illnesses associated with modern society. Sertraline belongs to the pharmaceutical class of
anti-depressant and is intensively used worldwide to treat severe cases of depression.
According to recent studies, several active principles from this family of pharmaceutical
drugs, despite being at very low levels of concentration in water, can have a variety of
harmful side effects in the environment's flora and fauna in addition to the potential risk of
underground water contamination later used for animal or even human consumption [2-4].
This work will present the main experimental results for the removal of sertraline from
water by adsorption using activated carbon obtained from olive stones. The activated
carbon material was obtained from olive stones, by powdering the granulated olive stones
to a diameter of 0.25 mm, chemically activated with a strong acid and then carbonized. The
equilibrium adsorption isotherms were obtained using the batch method and then fitted to
different adsorption models, such as the Langmuir or Freundlich models for liquid phase
adsorption. The most significant adsorption parameters were optimized, such as the
solution pH, mass of the adsorbent used, adsorption contact time and adsorption
temperature. The kinetics of the sertraline adsorption on the adsorbent was estimated
using the pseudo-first and pseudo-second order models. Obtained results in this work
clearly show that olive stones, usually a residue from the Portuguese and Mediterranean
oliviculture, can be exploited as a promising and low-cost bio-mass source on the
production of adsorbent materials with considerable potential to remove micropollutants,
such as the antidepressant sertraline, from water
