Science Daily May 11, 2023
In recent years great strides have been made to design adsorbents to detoxify water, as well as for a related challenge of recovering valuable metals at low concentrations. However, applying nanomaterials at scale and differentiating which nanomaterials are best suited for particular applications can be challenging. Researchers at the Northwestern University have developed a methodology for loading nanomaterial coatings onto adsorbent membranes, testing different coatings against one another, and leveraging these materials under a variety of conditions. The tailored coating for lead remediation, made from manganese-doped goethite nanoparticles, could filter lead from contaminated water to below detectable levels when coated onto a cellulose membrane, and the coated membrane could be recovered and reused for multiple cycles through mild tuning of pH. The Nano-SCHeMe methodology demonstrated a platform approach for effectively deploying nanomaterials for environmental applications and for direct and fair comparisons among these nanomaterials. According to the researchers their approach is flexible, and the coatings have the potential to be applied to a range of sorbents… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
