Preparation of carbon monolith derived from resorcinol - Formaldehyde resin and its application for antibiotic adsorption

The presence of antibiotics in wastewater discharged to the waterbody has negative effects. The antibiotics can induce bacteria to be persistent. Hence, efforts to limit the concentration of antibiotics in wastewater are required. In this work, the removal of antibiotics was performed by adsorption using nanoporous carbon in the form of a monolith. The carbon monolith was prepared by pyrolysis of templated resorcinol formaldehyde polymer at 600°C and 800oC. The material was characterized systematically by scanning electron microscopy and an N2-sorption analyzer. As a comparison, commercial carbon of coconut shell-derived was also employed in the study. The characterization showed that porous carbon monolith has a high specific surface area up to 594 m2/g. In the adsorption test, the results indicated that carbon monolith was better at adsorbing antibiotics compared to the commercial one.