Efficient banana peel powder-based bio-sorbent for moxifloxacin adsorptive removal

In the pharmaceutical industry, antibiotics produce a large amount of wastewater, contributing to environmental contamination and the rise of drug resistance. Moxifloxacin is primarily found in wastewater inlets, surface water, and hospital effluents. Due to its hard dissociation, which affects marine life, wastewater must be treated before disposal. Adsorption technology is a cost-effective and efficient physicochemical method commonly applied in wastewater treatment. This study aims to investigate the adsorption of the moxifloxacin antibiotic onto banana peel powder from aqueous solutions under batch conditions. The optimised batch adsorption parameters are dosage = 150 mg, time = 45 min, rotational per minute speed = 100 rpm, and initial concentration = 20 ppm with a removal percentage of 85% and a minimal relative standard deviation of 2.9%. Bio-adsorbent characterization reveals the material’s structure, composition, and surface properties using techniques such as Scanning Electron Microscopy, Zeta Potential analysis, and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. The outcomes obtained from adsorptive models indicated that the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models and the pseudo-second-order kinetic model exhibited excellent linearity. The maximum adsorption capacity observed was 21.6 mg/g, and the constant value (K2) for the pseudo-second-order kinetic model was measured at 0.048 for moxifloxacin under constant room temperature and neutral pH conditions. This study highlights the effectiveness of banana peel powder as a bio-adsorbent for removing the selected antibiotic from liquid solutions, emphasizing its potential for pharmaceutical pollutant monitoring and wastewater treatment.