Removal of Cefixime from Water Using Rice Starch by Response Surface Methodology

Background: remaining pharmaceutical compounds cause environmental pollution. therefore, refining these compounds has become a major challenge. in this study, the function of eliminating cefixime (cfx) using rice starch was evaluated under controlled conditions. methods: response surface methodology (rsm) was used to design, analyze, and optimize experiments, and the interaction between four variables including ph (3-9), rice starch dose (0–300 mg/l), cfx initial concentration (0–16 mg/l) and time (20– 120 min) was investigated on cfx removal. results: the optimum ph, starch dose, initial concentration and time were 4.5, 225 mg/l, 7.9 mg/l and 95 min, respectively. the maximum efficiency of cfx removal was 70.22%. according to rsm, this study follows a quadratic model (r2=0.954). conclusion: rice starch has been successful in removing cfx from the aqueous solution. therefore, it is recommended to utilize this process to remove cfx from aqueous solutions.