Drugs Removal from Wastewater with Activated Carbon from Coffee Waste

Abstract

Today, pharmaceutical residues constitute most of the problem in the water contamination because they are active principles which are able to act at low quantities, and they are usually recalcitrant to the conventional wastewater treatment. Hospital effluent is the main source of the environmental contamination by pharmaceuticals due to their excessive use in medical establishments. In our study, we collected the coffee grounds from Dubai cafes which was washed and then carbonized, and this carbonized product will be cooled and sieved. We will evaluate the ability of this unique activated carbon in decontaminating hospital effluents and eliminating pharmaceutical compounds. This filtration is carried out by the adsorption process on the pores generated by the activation of carbon in a prototype designed for this purpose. The chromatographic analysis will confirm the expected results. In fact, many pharmaceuticals were completely disappeared from hospital effluent after the treatment with coffee grounds and for other drugs the removal of the chemical compounds exceeded 90%. The developed technique which is based on the production of activated carbon from coffee grounds can have two major advantages: the recovery of one waste (coffee grounds) for the treatment of another waste hospital wastewater and completely clear of pharmaceuticals.