SYNTHESIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF FUNCTIONAL SILICA AEROGELS UNDER AMBIENT CONDITIONS FOR THE REMOVAL OF HIGH-RISK ANTIBIOTICS FROM AQUEOUS ENVIRONMENT BY ADSORPTION METHOD
Project no. 23943 · Status: Kapanmış · 2022
Summary
<p>The use of silica aerogels as adsorbents in separation applications, has become a very interesting topic in recent years due to their high specific area, accessibility and functionality. With this project, an adsorption process is adapted to remove different antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, amoxicillin, spiramycin, ornidazole) which are in the high-priority class of harmful chemicals due to their high eco-toxicity from aqueous media using functional silica aerogels. The silica aerogels in the Project were synthesized with a facile sol-gel approach followed by an ambient pressure drying. During the aerogel synthesis, silica precursors with different active groups such as vinyl, epoxy, amine, methacrylate were incorporated to induce proper functionalization. The effect of the functionalization on the physicochemical and morphological properties of the final product was investigated via various characterizations. Different physicochemical and morphological properties were obtained according to the presence of functional groups in the synthesized adsorbents. In adsorption experiments, operational conditions (adsorbent dosage, mixing time, pH, etc.) that provided the maximum capacity value for each antibiotic type were determined. The antibiotic adsorption performance of the adsorbents was revealed through both batch equilibrium and continuous column experiments. The obtained high adsorption capacity, fast adsorption kinetics, regeneration efficiency and cyclic performance have shown that especially vinyl and amine functional aerogels, are promising adsorbents for the removal of different antibiotics from wastewater. </p>