Heavy metals in marine environment are a worldwide concern due to their adverse impact on marine organisms and human health. Heavy metals in seawater have been traced to natural and anthropogenic sources with the latter becoming a more important contributor near coastal population centers. Indeed, seawater in many places has heavy metal levels that are toxic to marine life particularly near harbors. Heavy metals accumulate in the food chain and ultimately threaten the health of human population that is reliant on marine products for a third of its protein intake. This work investigates functionalized nanoporous sorbents for selective adsorption and removal of toxic heavy metals (i.e., Cu2+ and CrO42-) from seawater. Copper and chromium are leached from hull, paint and cladding in ships, wood and timber preservatives (e.g., copper chromated arsenate) in piers, and heat exchangers and pipes in seawater cooling installations.The mechanism of adsorptions of copper and chromium were investigated on mesoporous materials functionalized with amine-containing surface moieties. Perturbation in the lone pair electrons of the nitrogen in the amine group was used to tune the adsorption selectivity on the nanoporous sorbent. Experiments showed that this approach can led to design of selective nanoporous sorbent (S1) capable of removing better than 99 % of dissolve copper in real seawater with a Kd of 106. Similar, approach was used to develop a sorbent (S2) that selectively remove dissolved chromium >99% at a Kd of 106. Both sorbents are regenerated for reuse with an acid wash with no significant lost in adsorption capacity and selectivity.

Selective removal of Cu2+ and CrO42- from seawater by functionalized nanoporous sorbents

246th National Meeting (2013)

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