Eradication of pharmaceutical contaminant from water using carbon based magnetic spheres a sustainable approach

Abstract

Evolution of pharmaceutical compounds in the field of medicine plays a vital role as a therapeutic and healing agent. There are many pharmaceutical compounds like antibiotics, hormones, vitamins, steroids, analgesic, and antidepressants. These compounds are heterocyclic aromatic compounds with numerous functional groups that are formed due to various chemical modulations/reactions. The demand for pharmaceutical compounds is newlineincreasing day by day due to the discovery of various harmful diseases in human, veterinary, poultry, and aquaculture. The increased production and usage have led to its discharge into the surrounding environment. In recent years, the presence of antibiotics in water turned into polluting through the formation of mutated genes called antibiotic resistance genes in newlinemicroorganisms. Apart from resistance genes, the presence of pharmaceutical compounds in water and its surrounding environment has led to affect the life cycle mechanism in microalgae, endocrine malfunction, disruptive functioning of the reproductive process in microbes and marine bodies and development of resistance within metabolic pathways both in microbes and newlineterrestrial bodies. Conventional wastewater treatment plant involves an activated sludge process that served as a hotspot for sulphonamide drugs thereby portraying its least efficient removal. There are physical, chemical and biological methods used in the removal of pharmaceutical compounds, Among them, adsorption is considered an effective method as it is simple, non-toxic, does not involve the formation of secondary metabolites, with less newlineenergy consumption and manpower demand. newline newline