Water is considered to be the most precious commodity on the planet, and one that needs to be treated with respect. With the ever growing world population, there is an increasing need to develop new materials and systems that can potential improve the quality of water on longer time scales. Newly emerged nanomaterials, such as graphene or carbon nanotubes, are of increasingly widespread importance in environmental remediation, especially in their ability to remove undesirable chemicals from hydrological systems. In this presentation, an in-depth overview of the use of next generation carbon-based nanomaterials for adsorption applications will be discussed. Aqueous-phase adsorption of multiple organic compounds and heavy metal ions at environmentally relevant concentrations by granular activated carbon and graphene-single-walled carbon nanotube free-standing hybrid papers will be presented. Results show that the hybrid nanocomposites have superior adsorption capacities compared to bulk carbonaceous materials with up to 35% and 170% larger uptakes towards aromatic and ionic compounds, respectively. In addition, the use of highly porous, lightweight aerogels as adsorbents of high bonding affinity for a large variety of chemicals provide opportunities for enhanced separation processes. In particular, the nature and the amount of nanostructures (graphene, multi-walled or single-walled carbon nanotubes) along with their dispersion state throughout the carbonaceous matrix strongly influence the adsorption properties of the aerogel. Finally, an outlook on the use of sorted carbon nanotubes for adsorption applications will be shared.

Using carbon nanomaterials to address the grand challenge of clean water for all people

256th National Meeting (2018)

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