Naproxen Removal Capacity Enhancement by Transforming the Activated Carbon into a Blended Composite Material

The naproxen adsorption capacity enhancement of activated carbon prepared from the Indian gooseberry seed-shells by manufacturing a composite blended with the surface-modified graphite powder and silver nanoparticles was studied in the present context. The composite of the nano-sized materials was prepared in dimethylformamide solution and characterized by employing XRD, Raman, EDS and FT-IR spectroscopy, FETEM, and FESEM microscopy. The pseudo-first-order, pseudo-second-order, and Elovich models were applied to test the removal kinetics. Preliminary results were also fitted to the Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, and Dubinine-Radushkevich (D-R) adsorption isotherm models to determine the specific parameters of each model. The effects of the initial pH of the solution, naproxen concentration, and contact time on the process were optimized. The maximum adsorption capacity was obtained as 154.98 mg g −1 (61.99%) with an increment of 25.31% by the addition of surface-modified graphite powder and silver nanoparticles at the optimized experimental conditions.