A smart and sustainable adsorption-based system for decontamination of amoxicillin from water resources by the application of cellular lightweight concrete: experimental and modeling approaches.

Antibiotics such as amoxicillin (AMX) are considered as one of the emerging pollutants, which brings many environmental and health disasters. Removing AMX from water resources should be considered a mandatory action. Moreover, by considering sustainable development goals, construction and demolition wastes may be applied as an entity of manufacturing in the different fields. In this paper, according to our best knowledge for the first time, cellular lightweight concrete waste was used as a non-expensive, powerful, and novel adsorbent for AMX removal from water. Based on response surface methodology, the key factors of adsorption process, including contact time, amounts of adsorbent, and pH, were studied. The ideal conditions for the removal of AMX are pH 11.65, the mass of adsorbent: 19.31 mg, and 34 min contact time. In addition, among the prediction models, the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system was more fitted in comparison with random tree, multilayer perceptron and random forest algorithms. Different isotherm models such as Freundlich, Dubinin–Radushkevich, Langmuir, and Temkin, which have two-parameter equations besides Khan, Toth, and Sips with three-parameter equations were studied, and as a result, multilayer adsorption with the mainly heterogeneous surface was interpreted and fitted by the Freundlich model. Moreover, the kinetic models of adsorption, including pseudo-first- and second-order, Boyd, Elovich, intra-particle, and geometry kinematic computations, were examined, and pseudo-first order was more fitted with the adsorptive reaction. As per the geometric outcomes, the process of AMX adsorption appeared perfectly because there is no interaction between the adsorption and desorption rate graphs. These materials can be recycled with effective capacity for AMX removal after almost four repeated cycles. Finally, the competitive adsorption issue is investigated in detail between AMX and four other contaminations, including lead ion (Pb2+), malachite green, azithromycin (AZ), and sodium chloride (NaCl). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]