Coating magnetic biochar with humic acid for high efficient removal of fluoroquinolone antibiotics in water

As antibiotics are widely consumed, fluoroquinolones (FQs) behave to have huge hidden danger to human health. Various agricultural residues have potential to produce biochar rich in porous structure for adsorption of contaminants. In this study, potato leaves and stems were pyrolyzed at 500 °C under anoxic condition for biochar (BC) preparation. At the same conditions, magnetic biochar (MBC) and humic acid (HA) coated magnetic biochar (HAB) were also prepared. In particular, characterizations of HAB showed the extensive coating of HA on MBC surface and introducing more oxygen-containing groups, which may promote the adsorption capacity of biochar. Three typical FQs (ciprofloxacin (CIP), norfloxacin (NOR) and enrofloxacin (ENR)) were used as target contaminants to further investigate the adsorption property of HAB. Compared with BC and MBC, novel adsorbent HAB due to introduction of HA exhibited better FQs adsorption ability, and its maximum adsorption capacity for CIP, NOR and ENR were 1.80, 1.67 and 1.70 times higher than those of MBC and were 3.40, 2.88, 2.96 times higher than those of raw BC, respectively. Pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir isotherm model could describe the process of FQs adsorbed on HAB more appropriately, and thermodynamic results illustrated that the sorption process was spontaneous and endothermic. In addition, FQs adsorption by HAB was increased with initial solution pH from 3.0 to 10.0, while it was slightly decreased with ionic strength rising (0.001–0.1 M CaCl2). Combined with FTIR results, high FQs removal efficiency could be attributed to electrostatic, hydrophobic, H-bond and π-π EDA interactions.