Investigation of Snail shells as an Adsorbent and Precursor for the synthesis of Calcium Oxide Nanoparticles for the Removal of Amoxicillin from Aqueous Solution

Abstract

Snail shells are rich in CaCO₃ as its major constituent. Consequently, its application for the adsorption removal of contaminants has been linked to the presence of this compound. In this study, comparative efforts were made to adopt snail shells in a direct and indirect approach toward the adsorption removal of amoxicillin from an aqueous solution. The direct approach was implemented by using the powder samples obtained from crushing the snail shells. The indirect method was centred on resource recovery technology, which involved the fabrication of calcium nanoparticles from the crushed powdered sample. Both sets of adsorbents were candidates for the batch adsorption removal of amoxicillin from water. The adsorption removal efficiency by the nanoparticles showed an outstanding gap regarding their performance compared to the crude samples. However, adsorption in all cases was influenced by temperature, concentration of the drug, ionic strength, time and pH. The pseudo-second order, intraparticle diffusion and liquid diffusion showed favourable fits to the experimental data while the thermodynamic values showed exothermic adsorption for the nanoparticles and endothermic for the crude sample. The adsorption behaviours of both adsorbents displayed excellent fitness for the Langmuir model. Based on the results of the study, Nanoparticles obtained from snail shells have better adsorption properties than the crude samples due to enhanced surface properties