Sulfonamide antibiotics adsorbed in HY faujasite zeolite: a multidisciplinary approach

Sulfonamide antibiotics, widely used for the treatment of bacterial, protozoal and fungal infections in human therapy, livestock production and aquaculture, may cause severe pollution of water bodies. Recently, some of the authors have proposed an effective technique to remove such pollutants from water bodies using cheap and safe materials as zeolites. We report on experimental and computational studies of the interaction of three sulfonamides into a highly dealuminated HY zeolite. The host/guest antibiotics and zeolite interactions are elucidated by a multidisciplinary approach including SS-NMR, FTIR and Raman spectroscopy, along with high level ab initio computational modelling. The comparison between experimental and theoretical results allow us to propose a structure for the sulfonamides embedded into zeolite cages and to evaluate the key factors driving the adsorption process.