Removal of Cefixime from Water Using Rice Starch by Response Surface Methodology.

Background: Remaining pharmaceutical compounds cause environmental pollution. Therefore, refining these compounds has become a major challenge. In this study, the function of eliminating Cefixime (CFX) using rice starch was evaluated under controlled conditions.
Methods: Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to design, analyze, and optimize experiments, and the interaction between four variables including pH (3-9), rice starch dose (0-300 mg/L ), CFX initial concentration (0-16 mg/L ) and time (20-120 min ) was investigated on CFX removal.
Results: The optimum pH, starch dose, initial concentration and time were 4.5, 225 mg/L , 7.9 mg/L and 95 min , respectively. The maximum efficiency of CFX removal was 70.22%. According to RSM, this study follows a quadratic model (R ² =0.954).
Conclusion: Rice starch has been successful in removing CFX from the aqueous solution. Therefore, it is recommended to utilize this process to remove CFX from aqueous solutions.
(Copyright© 2020 Avicenna Research Institute.)