Main advances and future prospects in the remediation of the antibiotic amoxicillin with a focus on adsorption technology: A critical review

Due to its high efficiency in treating some common diseases, the medical community has frequently recommended the use of amoxicillin antibiotic. Once present in the human body, most of it is not metabolized and is released in the urine. As a result, treatment plants that do not have 100 % removal have released the antibiotic into the environment, detected in industrial and domestic sewage, causing concern to the scientific community. Once present in water compartments, amoxicillin causes risks to aquatic biota and human health by propagating resistant organisms. With this, studies have been developed to investigate concentration levels and improve remediation techniques. Therefore, this study analyzes how amoxicillin enters the environment, its ecotoxicological effects, and the advances in remediation technologies. The advantages and disadvantages of each technology, mainly adsorption, are also discussed in detail. The limitations and advances of each treatment (physical, chemical, and biological) are also addressed to understand the choice of process. Adsorption and advanced oxidation processes are the most applied in antibiotic removal. Among the adsorbents analyzed, carbonaceous materials have good removal capacity. Where the Langmuir monolayer isotherm was the most used to represent the system. The pseudo-second-order model can well represent the adsorption kinetic data. Most processes are in batch mode and governed by physical interactions, making reusing the adsorbent possible. The mineralization of the drug in the oxidative processes was lower than the degradation rate due to the generated intermediates. Finally, this review presents research gaps and recommendations to face challenges to inspire new research paths. In this sense, further studies involving the treatment of real effluents are recommended, and economic viability studies and hybrid systems should be better explored for application in real effluents.