Biochar as an adsorbent for removal of pharmaceutical compounds from wastewater

Pharmaceutical wastewater comprises several organic compounds including therapeutic and cosmatologic drugs, diagnostic agents, nutraceuticals, and surfactants. Due to severe adverse effects the removal of such contaminants from wastewaters is essential. The efficient and cost effective way to remove pharmaceutical compound from aqueous media is the use of alternative adsorbent material such as biochar. Biochar can be produced from agrowaste biomass generated from different anthropogenic activities. Recently, biochar is gaining more demand due to its inherent properties such as high carbon sequestration, soil property enhancer, energy production, and environmental remediation. Biochar is a stable carbon-rich material and act as an efficient adsorbent for sorption of organic contaminants owing to its hydrophobic nature with higher surface area and volume of micropores resulted in high-temperature pyrolysis. Moreover, the oxygen containing group on the surface of biochar exhibit strong binding ability through heterogeneous surface chemistry. However, along with surface functional groups, and the size of the pollutants; removal efficiency also depends on surface area, pore size distribution of the target molecules. Further, feed nature and method of preparation govern the surface morphology and properties of biochar. This chapter is focused on production and characterization of biochar, mechanism, equilibrium, and kinetics of adsorption with systematic overview of pharmaceutical contaminants removal from wastewater using biochar.