Skip to content
Heavy Metal Index

Development of Cu-ZnO ZrO2 based polyacrylonitrile polymer composites for removing pharmaceutical pollutants and heavy metals from wastewater

Source

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.

Page snapshot
Cited by3 pages
Metals measured2
Evidence tierA
Year2025

Overview

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.

Wiki pages this source may touch

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.

Update history

The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and 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.

CommitDateChangeDescription
b01ec52c32026-08-04major1 section added
3171d069e2026-08-02major1 section added
90a2f9a382026-07-30major1 section added and 1 removed; narrative text revised
eaa8eeeed2026-07-27major1 section added
50de6ab212026-07-27minorNarrative text revised