Nanopartículas de sílica mesoporosas SBA16 funcionalizadas com óxido de cobre: um potencial sistema para remoção de agrotóxicos em meio aquoso

Abstract

Nowadays, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Brazil, USA and China are the biggest consumers of pesticides around the globe. For being one of the world leaders in food production, our country consumed, only in 2020, around 370 thousand tons of pesticides. These compounds have high molecular stability and low biodegradability. They are also hard to remove from the aquatic environment. These factors made them a huge problem to fauna, flora, and human beings. Looking at this scenery, the development of public politics to control the use of these compounds are vitally important to the planet’s life. developing techniques and materials to remove these toxic materials from the aquatic environment is also important. In this sense, the copper oxide-coated silica nanoparticles (SBA16@CUO) were idealized as an innovator system to remove pesticides from water. It was observed that the samples produced are promising materials for adsorption purposes, presenting mesoporous networks with specific surface area values of up to 128.92 m2/g. Beyond this, using different techniques was possible to infer the average particle size of approximately 215.93 nm. The study of pesticide adsorption was evaluated using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) technique. For the quantification of pesticides, calibration curves with a coefficient of determination (r2) greater than 0.9628, revealed that the SBA16@CUO samples had adsorption capacity with an average percentage of pesticides Dieldrin, Paraquat, and DEET of 72%, 91%, and 87%, respectively. Considering the results obtained, the SBA16@CUO can be considered a potential system to be applied to remove pesticides, with an innovative character for the market.