Background: Today, the presence and fate of pharmaceutical waste is one of the most important issues in environmental protection. Among the various types of contamination, tetracyclines are indiscriminately and frequently used to treat various infectious diseases. Therefore, an efficient system is needed to remove tetracyclines from wastewater.
Aim: The aim of this research is to destroy tetracycline antibiotic with the highest efficiency in the shortest time.
Methodology: In this study, nickel ferrite was synthesized through the sol-gel method. The rate of degradation of tetracycline antibiotic from its aqueous solution was investigated using persulfate and persulfate on nanoparticles. Finally, the recovery and reusability of nanoparticles were investigated.
Findings: Structural and magnetic properties of nickel ferrite nanoparticles were investigated by XRD, FT IR, VSM methods. Potasium persulfate (KPS) was destroyed 5.92% of TC after 120 minutes. This shows that KPS itself has a limited ability to degrade TC, but when KPS is placed in the presence of nickel ferrite (NiFe2O4), TC degradation increases dramatically. Also, in the optimal conditions of TC with a concentration of 80 mg per liter (pH=3, concentration of 10 mM of KPS, concentration of 1.6 grams per liter of nickel ferrite and temperature of 40 degrees Celsius) in the first 20 minutes, we reached 90.42% of TC degradation. TC degradation efficiency reaches 88.88% after 4 consecutive cycles, so the nanoparticle can be recovered and used in subsequent processes.
Conclusion: This research shows the effective efficiency of nickel ferrite nanoparticles in persulfate activation. Considering the very high importance of time in the industry, this method can be used to remove the antibiotic tetracycline in the pharmaceutical industry with high efficiency in a very short time and save time and money, and as a useful method to remove a percentage of the resulting effluents. He knew about this antibiotic.