Sorption Properties of Composite Materials Based on Hemp Hulls and the Byproducts of Silicon Production Used to Remove Antibiotics from Wastewater

Removing residual amounts of antibiotics from wastewater is an important area of study. The uncontrolled use of antibiotics has led to their accumulation in the ecosystem and to antibiotic resistance in microorganisms. Each year 700 thousand people die because of antibiotic resistance. By 2050, this number may reach 10 million people. Antibiotics enter the waterways after being excreted by humans and animals and pass through wastewater treatment plants, posing an environmental risk to human and biota health. The goal of this paper is to study the use of hemp hull (a byproduct of hemp oil production) and a complex sorbent based on hemp hulls to remove tetracycline from the wastewater of hospitals and pig farms. To conduct our study, we created a wastewater system model and added antibiotics to the system. We used spectrophotometric determinination of antibiotics to examine the feasibility of removing antibiotics from a wastewater system in static and dynamic modes. A method of synthesizing complex sorbents based on hemp hull and dust from silicon and aluminum production is proposed.

Our experiment has shown that composite sorbents based on byproducts of hemp hull processing and silicon production (dust and scraps) can be used to treat water contaminated with antibiotics. We have determined that composite sorbents show better sorption of tetracyclines and the largest capacity in both static and dynamic operation. These sorbents almost fully removed the antibiotics from the solution.