Heliyon (Jan 2019)

Study of two cork species as natural biosorbents for five selected pesticides in water

  • Terencio R. de Aguiar, Jr.,
  • José Osmar A. Guimarães Neto,
  • Umut Şen,
  • Helena Pereira

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 5, no. 1
p. e01189

Abstract

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The present study evaluates biosorption efficiencies of pesticides atrazine, fluazifop-P-butyl, lactofen, lambda-cyhalothrin and chloropyrifos on corks of Quercus cerris and Quercus suber trees. The studies were carried out in batch and effects of pH (3, 7 and 9), temperature (10, 20, 30 and 40 °C), and time on adsorption were measured. Pesticide analyzes were performed with an Ion-trap Mass Spectrometer following the SANCO/10232/2006 EU extraction protocol for pesticides. The results show that the highest adsorption efficiency (80% and 70%) of the pesticides was found at pH 3, 30 °C and 360 minutes. The adsorption kinetics of pesticides followed pseudo-second order and pseudo-first order kinetics. The results obtained in this study show that Q. cerris and Q. suber corks can be used to develop efficient and economical cork-based alternatives for the treatment of environments contaminated with pesticides.

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