Removing toxic chemicals from water: New environmentally-friendly method


Date:
June 30, 2020
Source:
Swansea University
Summary:
Researchers have developed a new environmentally friendly method
for removing toxic chemicals from water. A newly invented machine,
called the Matrix Assembly Cluster Source (MACS), has been used to
design a breakthrough water treatment method using a solvent-free
approach.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers from Swansea University have developed a new environmentally friendly method for removing toxic chemicals from water.


==========================================================================
A newly invented machine, called the Matrix Assembly Cluster Source
(MACS), has been used to design a breakthrough water treatment method
using a solvent-free approach.

The research, from The Institute for Innovative Materials, Processing
and Numerical Technologies (IMPACT) within the College of Engineering
at Swansea University, was funded by the EPSRC and led by Professor
Richard Palmer.

Professor Richard Palmer explains: "The harmful organic molecules are
destroyed by a powerful oxidising agent, ozone, which is boosted by a
catalyst. Usually such catalysts are manufactured by chemical methods
using solvents, which creates another problem -- how to deal with the
effluents from the manufacturing process? The Swansea innovation is a
newly invented machine that manufactures the catalyst by physical methods, involving no solvent, and therefore no effluent.

The new technique is a step change in the approach to water treatment
and other catalytic processes." Professor Palmer continues: "Our new
approach to making catalysts for water treatments uses a physical process
which is vacuum-based and solvent free method. The catalyst particles
are clusters of silver atoms, made with the newly invented MACS machine.

It solves the long-standing problem of low cluster production rate
-- meaning, for the first time, it is now possible to produce enough
clusters for study at the test-tube level, with the potential to then
scale-up further to the level of small batch manufacturing and beyond."
The clusters are approximately 10,000 times smaller than the width of a
human hair and have been of significant interest to researchers because of their unique properties. However, due to the inadequate rate of cluster production, research in this area has been limited.

The new MACS method has changed this -- it scales up the intensity of
the cluster beam to produce enough grams of cluster powder for practical testing.

The addition of ozone to the powder then destroys pollutant chemicals
from water, in this case nitrophenol.

On the future potential of this breakthrough technology, Professor
Palmer summarises: "The MACS approach to the nanoscale design of
functional materials opens up completely new horizons across a wide
range of disciplines -- from physics and chemistry to biology and
engineering. Thus, it has the power to enable radical advances in
advanced technology -- catalysts, biosensors, materials for renewable
energy generation and storage.

It seems highly appropriate that the first practical demonstration
of Swansea's environmentally friendly manufacturing process concerns
something we are all concerned about -- clean water!"

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Swansea_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Rongsheng Cai, Francesca Martelli, Jerome Vernieres, Stefania
Albonetti,
Nikolaos Dimitratos, Chedly Tizaoui, Richard E. Palmer. Scale-Up of
Cluster Beam Deposition to the Gram Scale with the Matrix Assembly
Cluster Source for Heterogeneous Catalysis (Catalytic Ozonation
of Nitrophenol in Aqueous Solution). ACS Applied Materials &
Interfaces, 2020; 12 (22): 24877 DOI: 10.1021/acsami.0c05955 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200630155750.htm

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