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Sorption of diclofenac by polystyrene microplastics: Kinetics, isotherms and particle size effects

Chemosphere 2021 40 citations ? Citation count from OpenAlex, updated daily. May differ slightly from the publisher's own count. Score: 50 ? 0–100 AI score estimating relevance to the microplastics field. Papers below 30 are filtered from public browse.
Juying Li, Xiaotong Huang, Zhangming Hou, Tengda Ding

Summary

Researchers investigated the sorption of the pharmaceutical diclofenac onto polystyrene microplastics of different sizes, finding that sorption capacity increased with particle size and was influenced by environmental factors such as pH, ionic strength, and dissolved organic matter.

Polymers

Diclofenac (DCF) is a common pharmaceutical that widely distributed in natural waters, and has been received an increasing attention because of its potential toxicity. Additionally, microplastics are also ubiquitous pollutants in natural waters, but little information is available on their interactions. In this study, the sorption of DCF on polystyrene microplastics (PS MPs) with different particle sizes was investigated, and the influence of environmental factors was also explored. Results indicated that the pseudo-second-order kinetic model was suitable to describe the sorption process. The sorption capacity increased with the increase in particle size. The isotherms data for the sorption of DCF on 0.5 and 1 μm PS MPs were best fitted with the Dubinine-Radushkevich model, but the Freundlich and Langmuir models could best describe the sorption of DCF 5 and 20 μm PS MPs, respectively. It is suggested that the sorption was a chemisorption, which is also verified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results. Furthermore, the sorption capacity decreased as pH increased, and increased as ionic strength increased. These findings give a new perspective that the microplastics with larger sizes hold promise for the treatment of DCF-contaminated water.

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