Adsorptive removal of antibiotics from wastewater: A critical review of challenges and research gaps

The prevalent use of antibiotics in the varied sectors, including pharmaceutical industries, hospitals, and poultry/animal farms, is a primary source of antibiotic contamination in the freshwater system. Overdosing, improper handling, and disposal of antibiotics result in significant health effects on microbial communities, aquatic ecosystems, animals and humans. Several innovative strategies involving physical, chemical, and biological methods are being developed to remove antibiotics from polluted system with high efficiency. Of them, physical treatment techniques offer various advantages including ease of operation, versatile, flexible operations, eco-friendly and economically feasible. Surface adsorption science is the core concept behind most physical methods, exploting adsorbate-adsorbent interactions at solid-liquid interfaces for the batch process optimization. The scale-up of such adsorption process and their operation in continuous mode still require extensive research. Despite, the promising advantages of physical treatment methods, several bottlenecks hinder their effective implementation and commercialization such as high costs, regeneration challenges or low selectivity. Hence, this review is critically analyzes the key challenges and research gaps that need addressing by the scientific community.