Clay minerals for pharmaceutical wastewater treatment

Po Hsiang Chang, Zhaohui Li, Wei Teh Jiang, Binoy Sarkar

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

15 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A large number of pharmaceutical drugs, especially the antibiotics, have been used to treat diseases in humans, animals, and plants for a long time. The metabolic degradation rate of these drugs in humans and animals is very low, they could be released into the environment directly through feces or urine in the form of prototype or secondary metabolites, and they can be enriched in the environment, resulting in resistance of a variety of bacteria to antibiotics. This consequently brings a variety of health risks to human beings directly or indirectly. The most important behavior of antibiotics in the environment is adsorption, which not only affects the residence time, distribution, migration, and transformation of these compounds in the environment, but also affects their biological activities in the environment. Clay minerals show remarkable adsorption capacities and ion exchange performances for cationic drugs due to their unique layered structure and high cation exchange ability, and further have broad application prospects in wastewater treatment. Based on the structures and properties of clay minerals, such as rectorite, montmorillonite, palygorskite, illite, kaolinite, bentonite, and other clays, this chapter reviews the research on pharmaceutical drugs especially for the antibiotics' adsorption on clay minerals or soils with clay components in them.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationModified Clay and Zeolite Nanocomposite Materials
Subtitle of host publicationEnvironmental and Pharmaceutical Applications
PublisherElsevier
Pages167-196
Number of pages30
ISBN (Electronic)9780128146187
ISBN (Print)9780128146170
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018 Dec 6

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Engineering(all)
  • Materials Science(all)

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