Effective W/O emulsion performance to extract the antibiotic co-trimoxazole from wastewater.

Recently, the increased concentrations of co-trimoxazole (C-TMZ) in wastewater have gained significant concerns for their persistent input and possible risk to human health and the ecological environment. In this work, the separation of C-TMZ from wastewater by the emulsion liquid membrane (ELM) method was investigated. The W/O emulsion phase consists of xylene as the main solvent, di-(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) as a carrier, Span80 as a stabilizer agent, and H₂SO₄ solution as the stripping (internal) phase. The influence of several effective conditions on the extraction efficiency and emulsion stability were examined, including homogenization time, membrane to internal phase volume ratio, stabilizer and carrier concentration, H₂SO₄ concentration, pH of the external phase, emulsion to external ratio, and stirring speed. It was found that after 10 min of mixing time between the emulsion and the external phases, more than 98% of C-TMZ is removed from the external phase with the highest membrane stability of 99.5%. The determination of mass transfer coefficients and extraction kinetics were also investigated in this study. Four recycling processes of the organic liquid membrane phase were successfully applied to extract C-TMZ in a new ELM process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]