From Polysaccharides to Functional Materials for Trace Pharmaceutical Adsorption

Sammanfattning: The transition to bioeconomy will reduce our dependency on fossil fuels as well as contribute to a more sustainable society. Within this framework, exploitation and development of renewable substitutes to petroleum-based products provides feasible roadmap for the material design. Here a perspective is provided to how the natural polysaccharides chitosan (CS) and/or cellulose (CL) could be elaborated and transformed to high-performance materials with the explicit aim of removing trace pharmaceutical contaminants from the wastewater, thus facilitating the sustainable development. In the first part of the thesis, chitosan and cellulose were converted to the carbon spheres (C-sphere) through a microwave-assisted hydrothermal carbonization process, and C-sphere was further broken down to the nanographene oxide (nGO) via a simple oxidation route. On this foundation, a green pathway was developed for fabrication of biobased materials for wastewater purification. First, macroporous chitosan-based composite hydrogels with controllable properties were developed, where chitosan-derived nGO worked as a functional property enhancer. Second, a further development changing from the bulky hydrogels to microgels consisting of CS composite particles in the microscopic size was achieved by a fast one-pot spraying-drying process. The crosslinking reaction occurred in situ during the spray-drying. Last, the C-sphere by-itself was also believed to be a potential adsorbent for wastewater contaminants. In the next step the prepared systems were evaluated for their capacity to adsorb pharmaceutical contaminants. Diclofenac sodium (DCF) was utilized as the model drug, and the three fabricated bio-adsorbents all demonstrated effective DCF adsorption performance, with the adsorption efficiency varying from 65.6 to 100%. Moreover, the DCF adsorption kinetics, isotherms and thermodynamic study were also investigated to reveal the nature of the adsorption process with the different materials. Finally, chitosan-based microspheres were selected for the reusability study, with the adsorption efficiency above 70% retained after six adsorption-desorption cycles, thus further endowing the promising potential of the fabricated bio-adsorbents for commercial applications.