Latest advances in adsorptive decontamination of antibiotics remnants from wastewater by physiochemically fabricated phytowaste materials

Abstract

Antibiotics, posing a major threat to life on earth and water causing propagation of antibiotic resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistant mutant genes. Traces of these antibiotic toxins are found both in aquatic as well as terrestrial ecosystem. Various techniques, that is, ozonation, membrane filtration, Fenton process, etc., are applied for their removal but have many shortcomings, so adsorption is picked as efficient, simple and relatively safe removal technique. This review article discusses the classification of antibiotics, effect of their unnecessary application and removal methods of their remnants from water sources. Also, compares adsorptive removal of antibiotics remnant with other primitive and advance techniques, suggesting adsorption as one of the effective techniques.

Graphical Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS

• Antibiotics growing rapidly as global threat to water pollution

• 65% increase in antibiotics use in past 20 years in low-income countries

• Antibiotics remnants get into food chain and water reservoirs when applied to plants, animals and human folks

• Antibiotics over exposure results into antibiotic resistant genes formation and cause drop in immunity

• Adsorption is simple and effective kind of technique with least by-product to eliminate antibiotic remnants from water sources

• Agricultural waste or natural adsorbent sources are effective in competing their synthetic counter parts being expensive and high maintenance demanding

• Isotherms and kinetics of various adsorbents support effective removal of antibiotic remnants from aqueous solution

• Natural adsorbents have good potential for future to be studied on and used as alternative

Keywords:

• Antibiotic remnants
• adsorption
• waste water
• physio-chemical processing

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

All data related to this work presented along with references.

Additional information

Funding

The authors are thankful to Taif University, Saudi Arabia, for supporting this work through project number (TU-DSPP-2024-232).