Drinking water in is inarguably a life necessity to the global population and the lack of clean and safe drinking water can remarkably deteriorate the quality of life for those affected. The focus within drinking water cleaning have long been on the removal of pathogens, but as inorganic fertilizers become accessible to an expanding population nitrate is becoming problem in a growing number of aquifers. The problem arises as unconsumed fertilizer being washed out of farming soils. The EU have sought to prevent nitrification of drinking water resources trough drinking dater directive I,II and III. Once polluted the drinking water resource can either be retired or processed to produce drinking water. An analysis of the retirement pattern in Danish drinking water resources show that retirement of a source only occur when a alternative resource is accessible, while the most polluted resources remain in use because no alternative is present. Nitrate pollution can be remedied by reverse osmosis with brine production, high energy consumption and the need to re-ionize water as side-effects or less conventional by bio-reduction which is used with caution due to the risk of introducing pathogens into the drinking water supply.  An alternative to reverse osmosis and bio reduction is catalytic reduction of nitrate. Clean drinking water is provided through catalytic reduction of nitrate to nitrogen using hydrogen. The reaction proceeds in the liquid phase at temperature and pressure of ground water and utilizes a solid catalyst with transition metal particles. In this project a bimetallic palladium-tin system was examined with respect to the dependence of activity on active phase and robustness towards potential catalyst poisons in both ultra pure water with added nitrate and chloride to simulate drinking water and real drinking water obtained from a polluted source.

Catalytic reduction of nitrate in drinking water

247th National Meeting (2014)

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