Hypereutrophication, the release of excess nutrients into natural bodies of water, introduces a variety of economic, ecological, and public health problems around the globe. Current remediation tactics are often expensive, not practical at environmentally relevant concentrations, or create secondary pollution. We have developed a tunable nanocomposite approach that does not suffer from these drawbacks and helps transform laboratory-scale nanostructure solutions into practical environmental remediation tools. With this approach, we coat an economical, readily available, porous substrate using scalable, water-based processes with a slurry of nanostructures with affinity for pollutants. One of our materials is our Phosphate Elimination and Recovery Lightweight (PEARL) membrane, which can selectively sequester up to 99% of phosphate ions from polluted waters. Moreover, mild tuning of pH promotes at will adsorption and desorption of nutrients, leading to phosphate recovery and reuse of the PEARL membrane. This work builds on our prior report of the OHM sponge, made with the same platform approach, which is a nanocomposite material that can be used to repeatedly remove oil from water. These two distinct examples suggest that the nanostructure membrane approach is potentially a versatile platform that can be tailored to remediate other contaminants, such as heavy metals, with the same core principles. In this presentation, we discuss the PEARL membrane’s effective and selective performance. Moreover, we use correlative microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to interrogate the complex microstructure of the PEARL membrane and its binding efficacy. These results further suggest how this approach can be applied to other pollutants.

Phosphate elimination and recovery lightweight (PEARL membrane): A sustainable environmental remediation approach

ACS Spring 2022

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