Little information is available on the potential environmental impact of TiO2 nanoparticles. Due to the lack of proper understanding of their properties, there is a disagreement in interpreting their transport in the environment. Herein, we attempt to discuss the characteristic retention and breakthrough of TiO2 particles with unique nanoscale structure, i.e. well-defined nanoparticles (NPs) and nanostructured particles (NSPs), through a porous media under various reaction environments. NPs such as P-25 (30 nm) were completely different in terms of their physicochemical structure from NSPs, which may be more proper to be considered as micro or bulk TiO2 particles. Such observation undoubtedly evidenced an important finding that encapsulating NPs with stabilizers such as carboxymethyl cellulose abundant in the environment and changing their surface chemistry with pH and ionic strength greatly affected their dispersion in the aqueous phase and attachment as well as the mobility through a clean quartz media, while those strategies were not so effective for NSPs. Therefore, it is apparent that the terms NPs and NSPs should be more strictly differentiated in their use in order to avoid any confusion in assessing their mobility in the environment.

Transport of TiO<sub>2</sub> nanoparticles and nanostructured particles through a porous media

245th National Meeting (2013)

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Transport of TiO2 nanoparticles and nanostructured particles through a porous media

Transport of TiO₂ nanoparticles and nanostructured particles through a porous media