One of the greatest challenges we face in sustaining the health and safety of our available fresh water sources is the accumulation of a wide array of contaminants, from heavy metals to halogenated organics and other industrial and pharmaceutical compounds. Contaminants continue to be identified and determined to be harmful to environmental and human health. The industrialization of the world will continue to add contaminants to waterways on a global scale, and water treatment technologies play a critical role in controlling exposure of harmful contaminants. It is well known that traditional, commercially-available treatment materials, including activated carbon, filtration membranes, and chemically reactive systems (e.g., ozone, peroxide) can not fully address the spectrum of known contaminants, and our ability to design and develop next-generation materials relies heavily on having a strong understanding of the water chemistry, contaminant chemistry, and materials chemistry of the system. In our research, we focus on the development of nanostructured materials for water contaminant removal, with a specific interest in using our understanding of chemistry to advance the performance of materials, within the contextual requirements of cost and lifetime in water treatment systems. Through collaborations, we select key contaminants of concern and investigate how to design a material to address the specific chemistry of the contaminant or contaminant class. In this talk, I will discuss several examples from our research where we have been able to improve the performance of a water treatment material or develop a new material based on an understanding of the mechanism(s) of contaminant removal and associated water chemistry.

Materials for water contaminant removal: Understanding chemistry to meet the challenges of cost, performance efficacy and lifetime

255th National Meeting (2018)

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