A novel environmentally benign method was developed for the simultaneous removal of sulphonamides and multiclass class of veterinary drugs using mesoporous nanofibers. Processing parameters which affect the removal efficiency, such as pH, initial analyte concentration, adsorbent dosage and contact time were studied. An optimised method was applied to a real wastewater samples collected from Daspoort Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), South Africa. Under optimumconditions, the removal efficiency of veterinary drugs fromeffluent and influent ranged from35.24-94.57 +/- 0.24 and 31.71-76.91 +/- 0.65 mg g(-1), respectively. The surface area, cumulative volume of pores and average pore diameter of the nanofibers were determined as 2402.62 +/- 13.62 m(2) g(-1), 2.04 cm(3) g(-1) and 3.39 nm, respectively. The maximum adsorption capacity was ranged from 166 to 1000mg g(-1). The adsorption kinetics obeyed the pseudo-second-order rate equation suggesting that particle diffusion was the rate-limiting mechanism for adsorption of veterinary drugs on electrospun nanofibers. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

• Journal: Science Of the Total Environment
• Volume: 738
• Issue:
• Pages:
• ISSN: 0048-9697
• DOI:
• Year: 2020
• Number:
• Type: Journal Article