Adaileh et al. 2025 - PAN composite for lead and cadmium wastewater removal
Adaileh and colleagues fabricated a Cu-ZnO/ZrO2 polyacrylonitrile polymer composite and tested it for simultaneous removal of Pb(II), Cd(II), sulfamethoxazole, and ibuprofen from water. This is remediation and treatment-technology evidence. The reported concentrations, adsorption capacities, and percent removals describe wastewater-treatment performance, not heavy-metal occurrence in a consumer product.
Key numbers
The abstract reports photo-oxidation efficiencies of 85% for Pb(II) and 80% for Cd(II) within 120 min at starting concentrations of 50 mg/L. Under similar conditions, degradation reached 88% for ibuprofen and 90% for sulfamethoxazole.
The composite had a reported specific surface area of about 156 m2/g, an average pore size of 18.4 nm, and dispersed nanoparticles averaging 20-30 nm. Its bandgap energy was reported as 2.38 eV for the CZZRP composite, compared with 2.90 eV for pure PAN, with absorption range extending to 200-500 nm.
The contact-time section reports equilibrium at 120 min, with maximum removal efficiencies of 85% for Pb(II), 80% for Cd(II), 90% for sulfamethoxazole, and 88% for ibuprofen. Most pollutant removal occurred within the first 30 min.
The initial-concentration and Langmuir sections report maximum adsorption capacities of 36.0 mg/g for both Pb(II) and Cd(II), 30.0 mg/g for sulfamethoxazole, and 28.0 mg/g for ibuprofen. The Langmuir constants cited in the text were b = 0.15 L/mg for Pb(II) and b = 0.12 L/mg for Cd(II), while the conclusion states that isotherm analyses aligned more closely with Freundlich than Langmuir.
The kinetic discussion reports better fit to the pseudo-second-order model than pseudo-first-order, with R2 values greater than 0.98 in the abstract. In reuse testing, removal dropped over five cycles from 85% to 70% for Pb(II), from 80% to 70% for Cd(II), from 88% to 76% for ibuprofen, and from 90% to 75% for sulfamethoxazole.
Methods (brief)
The team embedded copper nanoparticles in a ZnO/ZrO2 nanocomposite structure supported by polyacrylonitrile. Characterization used FTIR, XRD, SEM, EDX, BET, and UV-Vis diffuse-reflectance spectroscopy. Experiments evaluated pH, adsorbent dose, contact time, light intensity/wavelength, initial pollutant concentration, temperature, Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms, pseudo-first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetics, and five-cycle reusability under visible-light-assisted treatment conditions.
Implications
Certification: Exclude all adsorption capacities, starting concentrations, and percent-removal values from product occurrence and HMTc benchmark pools. The source supports treatment-performance context for Pb/Cd remediation.
Courses: Useful for wastewater-remediation and supplier-control modules because it combines heavy-metal removal, pharmaceutical-contaminant degradation, visible-light photocatalysis, kinetic modeling, and reuse-cycle performance.
App: No direct consumer-product risk distribution. The source can support context that engineered treatment media may reduce upstream Pb/Cd in wastewater streams.
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Verification notes
This page was built from the PDF title page, abstract, contact-time results, concentration/isotherm sections, kinetic discussion, reusability results, and conclusion. The auto-fetch filename’s “fabric-protectants” label is not supported by the paper content. Products and ingredients are intentionally empty because the study reports aqueous remediation performance, not consumer-product occurrence.
Page history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page. The full version history lives in git; when DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 4039d20 | 2026-06-10 | scope: broaden ingest to the full upstream+downstream literature (marine, atmospheric, attribution, exposure, toxicology) — inclusion is the default |