USE OF NANOPARTICLES IN THE TREATMENT OF

PHARMACEUTICAL EFFLUENTS.
Pharmaceuticals have been recognized for saving billions of lives, but they also appear as a novel
group of environmental pollutants. The presence of pharmaceutically active residues in seawater,
surface water, wastewater treatment plants, sludges, and soils has been widely reported. Their
persistence in the environment for extended durations exerts various adverse consequences, such
as gene toxicity, hormonal interference, antibiotic resistance, sex organs imposition, and many
others. Various methodologies have been envisioned for their removal from the aqueous media,
which sometimes are difficult to identify, treat, or eliminate due to the concentrations (μg/L or
ng/L) they exist. The implementation of nanotechnology to remove pharmaceutical pollutants
from respective wastewater effluents, such as antibiotics, pesticides, hormones, antiviral drugs,
and toxic dyes, among others, has been increasing during the last decades. The sorbent materials
produced at the nanoscale offer unique properties, such as high absorption, large surface area,
eco-friendly fabrication, and huge affinity to organic and inorganic compounds.
Effluents are released into the environment with little or no treatment and these find their way
into the environment and poses threats to human, aquatic life and the biosphere. Also, techniques
used to treat pharmaceutical effluents are not able to identify, to treat, or to eliminate some
contaminants as a result of the trace concentrations (μg/L or ng/L) they exist, so they tend to
escape from treatments and begin to accumulate in the environment due to their low volatile
properties[8]. Conventional methods including chemical, biological, physical, and mechanical
treatments are insufficient to eliminate or degrade these complex molecules/metabolites. This
called for an approach which is sustainable and provides efficient purification.
Chitosan is a natural Polysaccharide-based Nanoparticle which is used in the treatment of
pharmaceutical effluents and is known to be environmentally benign, much less linked to
concerns over toxicity, biodegradability, biocompatibility, bioactive functions and physiological
stability.
This study aims at using nanoparticles in the treatment of pharmaceutical effluents where it will
be focused on: developing and characterizing chitosan, performing adsorption studies using the
chitosan produced for our treatment and looking at the thermodynamic and kinetic effects of our
system.
Chitosan nanoparticles will be prepared by using ionic gelation, one of the most preferred
preparation methods, which has first been described by Calvo et al., (1997) [22]. It is based on
ionic crosslinking (electrostatic attraction) that happens in the presence of inversely charged
groups; protonated amino groups of chitosan and negatively charged groups of the polyanion
such as sodium tripolyphosphate (TPP) [23] and mixing with whiles vigorously stirring in acetic
acid solution.