The use of Gold nanoparticles for the removal of 5-Fluorouracil from aqueous solutions
Date
2018-09-05
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
The use of cytotoxic drugs in cancer therapies is increasing annually. 5-Flourouracil (5-FU) is one of the most widely used antineoplastic drugs in the world and the threshold value toxicity of this drug is 94 ng/L (1). This research applied gold nanoparticles (GNPs) to remove 5-FU through adsorption. Concentrations were determined experimentally by UV-Vis spectroscopy. Several parameters like; contact time, temperature, pH, 5-FU initial concentration and dosage of Gold nanoparticles were tested by adsorption experiments. The equilibrium data corresponded better to Sips isotherm. The removal efficiency of 5-FU adsorbed by GNPs was more than 85% at environmental conditions (pH=[7-9], concentration of 5-FU=5mg/L, and temperature=298 K). The kinetic data showed that the adsorption followed pseudo second-order kinetic model. Thermodynamic parameters indicated that the adsorption process was exothermic and spontaneous. The activation energy value, which was 5.403 KJ/mol, implied that the adsorption between 5-FU and GNPs was physical. The use of GNPs to adsorb 5-FU was effective process since it was easy to reuse and recover GNPs using 0.1M HCL solution.
The results showed that GNPs were found to be an effective and functional adsorbent to remove 5-FU from water. It is recommended that the presence of 5-FU in our water resources should be addressed and considered to reduce it's toxic effects and different methods should be applied to remove it from water.