Phenolic compounds are known to be toxic and inflict both severe and long‐lasting effects on both humans and animals. They act as carcinogens and cause damage to the red blood cells and the liver, even at low concentrations. These compounds are important biomedical wastes, and are classified as hazardous substances contaminating groundwater resources. Therefore, the removal of these organics compounds in order to reach the permitted levels before discharging becomes a challenging. Several processes have been developed to remove phenolic compounds from waters, including electrochemical oxidation, redox reactions, membrane separation and photocatalytic degradation. Recently, tendency of phenolic compounds removal involves adsorption and photocatalytic process, using synthetic or natural particles, such as carbon materials and clays. Actually, materials in nanometric scale play an important role in the processes previously mention due to their unique chemical and physical properties. Extensive research has been performed on these compounds resulting in the elucidation of their structure or classification, their sources of entry into the aquatic environment and their reactivity or interaction with other components of the aquatic environment. Significant efforts have been made for the total elimination of phenolic compounds from water before use. This resulted in the development of water treatment technologies including the conventional methods such as activated carbon adsorption, solvent extraction and advanced technologies such as electro Fenton method, membrane‐based separation method, photocatalysis and so on, which have all been successfully used for removal of phenolic compounds from water. Activated carbon is the most promising adsorbent material, presenting high adsorption capacity for many pollutants (dyes, metals etc.). However, the need to turn on more environmental-friendly materials leads to the use of low-cost ones derived from agricultural sources.
The aim of this work is to use environmental-friendly materials (low-cost) as adsorbents for the treatment of biomedical effluents. Potato peels (supplied as wastes from restaurants) were used to produce samples of carbon after pyrolysis. The absorption evaluation was done with a series of absorption-desorption experiments studying major parameters as the effect of pH, temperature, initial drug concentration, contact time and regeneration ability.