Adsorptive Removal and Adsorption Kinetics of Fluoroquinolone by Nano-Hydroxyapatite.

Various kinds of antibiotics, especially fluoroquinolone antibiotics (FQs) have been widely used for the therapy of infectious diseases in human and livestock. For their poorly absorbed by living organisms, large-scale misuse or abuse of FQs will foster drug resistance among pathogenic bacteria, as well as a variety of environmental problems when they were released in the environment. In this work, the adsorption properties of two FQs, namely norfloxacin (NOR) and ciprofloxacin (CIP), by nano-hydroxyapatite (n-HAP) were studied by batch adsorption experiments. The adsorption curves of FQs by n-HAP were simulated by Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms. The results shown that NOR and CIP can be adsorbed effectively by the adsorbent of n-HAP, and the adsorption capacity of FQs increase with increasing dosage of n-HAP. The optimum dosage of n-HAP for FQs removal was 20 g · L(-1), in which the removal efficiencies is 51.6% and 47.3%, and an adsorption equilibrium time is 20 min. The maximum removal efficiency occurred when pH is 6 for both FQs. The adsorption isotherm of FQs fits well for both Langmuir and Freundlich equations. The adsorption of both FQs by n-HAP follows second-order kinetics.