As the population of the world continues to grow, the diminishing availability of clean water is becoming a serious global problem. Accordingly, water recycling is becoming increasingly common, but this often results in serious contamination with recalcitrant organic pollutants (e.g., agri-chemicals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, endocrine disruptors, etc.). Problems with current water purification methods include the formation of potentially toxic organochlorines, generation of large volumes of waste, high energy consumption and expense. There is a need to find a highly effective, inexpensive and simple method of water purification that would be appropriate for widespread adoption. We have attempted to address this problem by creating a smart catalytic film that oxidatively destroys organic pollutants as the contaminated water simply runs over its surface. The specially designed film anchors an oxidation catalyst, concentrates the dilute organic pollutants within the film bringing them in close contact with the catalyst, separates the hydrogen peroxide oxidant solution from the water to be purified, and allows the hydrogen peroxide to perfuse through the film in a controlled way to activate the catalyst sites. In this way the catalytic film oxidatively destroys organic pollutants without the water needing to be dosed (or contaminated) with oxidant, catalyst or other reagent. The film has been shown to oxidatively destroy both surrogate pollutants as well as “real world” pollutants such as triclosan, EE<sub>2</sub>, and bisphenol A. Details of the design, construction and performance of the smart catalytic film in several configurations will be presented.

Smart catalytic films for water purification

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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