The presence of various heavy-metal pollutants in groundwater and other drinking water sources presents a notable public health concern. One key mechanism used to address heavy-metal pollution is adsorption. Specifically, the utilization of iron-oxide sorbents has become prevalent for arsenic remediation. In recent years, iron-oxide nanoparticles have been proposed as a solution to these problems, but are limited by their tight agglomeration patterns when produced commercially. To address this concern, we evaluated the aggregation behavior of iron-oxide nanomaterials when treated with three various surface coatings: poly(acrylic acid), polyethylene glycol, and polyethylenimine. While these coatings were successful in reducing agglomeration, and thus increased usable surface area, they resulted in leaching once implemented in a column filtration set-up. In order to both maximize the amount of usable surface area and to prevent leaching, we used an iron-oxide nanomaterial with intentional clustering. We compared the efficacy of this new material to iron-oxide nanomaterials prepared by other techniques in a column set-up and found that the use of nanoclusters are a promising solution to implementing nanotechnology for real-world arsenic remediation.

Implementation of iron-oxide nanomaterials for arsenic remediation

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.