Access to safe drinking water is one of the biggest challenges that society will have to address in the upcoming years. The World Health Organization has estimated that by 2050, at least 50% of the global population will be living in water stressed areas. This challenge will be faced not only because of higher water consumption, but also by the increasing variety of pollutants that are released into wastewater. The current technologies used to treat these streams do not consider or eliminate many of the emerging contaminants, resulting in the liberation of these pollutants to the ecosystem and into drinking sources. Thus, new systems should be developed to remove them. However, these new materials still need to have high efficiencies and versatility to be integrated into current technologies and should be acquired through sustainable sources and processes. Dissolving cellulose into sodium-urea alkaline solutions has been proven to be a versatile processing alternative to generate soft materials like beads which can be used for the adsorption and removal of these emerging contaminants. Moreover, we have demonstrated the possibility of utilizing agricultural side streams as cellulose source instead of the traditional dissolving pulp by reducing the scale of the raw material. The formed beads were also made into composites with improved adsorption capacities by adding biopolymers like chitosan, cyclodextrin, or Tara gum into different processing steps. Likewise, resilient molecules and bacteria can be removed by using these cellulosic beads as scaffold for enzyme immobilization or metallic nanoparticles formation. This research demonstrates the versatility of regenerated cellulose beads in the improvement of water quality and can help to achieve sustainable solutions for emerging challenges

Cellulose beads composite hydrogel systems for water remediation

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ACS Spring 2023

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