The effective removal of contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) from water via adsorption requires materials that exhibit a synergistic combination of specific surface functionalities, textural properties and hydrophobicity. Although high surface area carbon based adsorbents are ubiquitous in water treatment operations everywhere, selectivity to CECs present in the ppm and sub-ppm range is severely constrained due to lack of specific surface interactions. Zeolite-like materials on the other hand offer substantial surface designability and yet suffer from significant hydrophilicity. In this talk we will discuss about strategies to overcome all of the aforementioned limitations via the design of nanoporous composite adsorbents with surfaces that rely on complexation-like interactions between particular CECs and transition metals, as well as simultaneous size exclusion and kinetic based separation principles.

Design of transition metal based composite adsorbents for the selective removal of contaminants of emerging concern from water

251st National Meeting (2016)

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