Application of micellar liquid chromatographic method for rapid screening of ceftriaxone, metronidazole, amoxicillin, amikacin and ciprofloxacin in hospital wastewater from Sagar District, India

The present research work mainly highlights the simultaneous detection of five antibiotics i.e., ceftriaxone (CTX), metronidazole (MTZ), amoxicillin (AMX), amikacin (AMK) and ciprofloxacin (CPFX) in hospital wastewater located in Sagar district (Madhya Pradesh, India). All these antibiotics make their way through drainage systems into the environment in the form of metabolized and unmetabolized compounds. Growing concern about the antibiotic resistance and contamination of wastewater by antibiotics requires fast, sensitive and eco-friendly techniques. Therefore a simple, rapid and eco-friendly chromatographic method has been developed for simultaneous determination of CTX, MTZ, AMX, AMK and CPFX in hospital wastewater samples. Optimization of the method was accomplished using response surface methodology (RSM) with Box-Behnken design (BBD). The optimized mobile phase was 0.15 M SDS-0.01 M NaH₂PO₄-7% (v/v) 1-butanol, pH 3 which provided a chromatographic run time of 11 min. for the simultaneous determination of selected antibiotics. The correlation coefficient (r²) values were satisfactory between 0.996 and 0.999 over the linear concentration range of 0.04–12 μg/mL. Limits of detection (LODs) and the limits of quantification (LOQs) for the five antibiotics were in the range of 0.02–0.18 μg/mL and 0.04–0.25 μg/mL, respectively. The developed method is simple, rapid, cost-effective and green which could be used for complex matrix (wastewater) without any sample pretreatment other than filtration. The results indicated that the MLC-PDA method proved to be more suitable than reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography for the simultaneous separation of selected antibiotics.