Study of the Use of Activated Carbon Prepared from the Eichhornia Crassipes Plant for Removing Paracetamol from Aqueous Solutions

This study utilized activated carbon derived from Eichhornia crassipes (EC), a cheap plant that grows widely along riverbanks. The plant has fibrous roots and a taproot. It has thin, round, erect, wavy, smooth, and shiny leaves. The flowers are beautiful violet with six petals, and the fruits contain about 300 seeds each. The seeds can remain active for about 20 years. It negative impacts contain environment because it consumes large amounts of water, as a biosorbent in batch adsorption experiments for the removal of paracetamol from synthetic aqueous solutions. It was tested as an adsorbent for heavy metals, dyes, and other pollutants. The biosorbent was characterized using XRD, FTIR, BET, and SEM techniques. Several factors affecting the adsorption were considered in the study, including the adsorbent dosage (AC/NOH) (0.2-2.5 g/L), pH value (3-10), initial paracetamol concentration (10-80 mg/L), and contact duration (15-240 min). The highest removal efficiency of 75% for paracetamol was observed at a contact time of 180 min, pH value of 3, adsorbent dosage of 2 g, and initial paracetamol concentration of 10 mg/L at 25 °C, and the maximum adsorption capacity of 17.42 mg/g was observed with an R² value of 0.9851 on the Langmuir curve, while the pseudo-second order kinetic model provided a better fit with R² = 0.9987. The study utilizes Eichhornia Crassipes as a low-cost and environmentally friendly bio sorbent, which has not been explored in previous research on removing pharmaceutical contaminants. This result suggests its potential application in removing other pharmaceutical contaminants from aqueous solutions.