‘Right material’ to efficiently remove mercury from water shows promising results | goldmining
According to lead researcher Masoud Soroush, adsorption —the process of chemically attracting and removing contaminants— seems to be the most promising technology for removing“Modern adsorbents, such as resins, mesoporous silica, chalcogenides, and mesoporous carbons, have higher efficiencies than traditional adsorbents, such as activated carbon, clays, and zeolites that have a low affinity toward mercury and low capacities,” Soroush said in a media statement.
“We knew that 2D materials, such as graphene oxide and molybdenum disulphide, had previously been effective in removing heavy metals from wastewater through adsorption because of their chemical functionalities/structures that attract metal ions,” Soroush said. “MXenes are a similar type of materials but we estimated that titanium carbide MXene could have much greater uptake capacities than these other materials—therefore making it a better sorbent for mercury ions.
“Mercury is called quicksilver for a reason—it’s quite evasive once emitted into the environment, whether by burning fossil fuels,, or waste incineration,” Soroush explained. “It quickly changes its chemical form—increasing its toxicity and making it tremendously difficult to remove from the bodies of water where it inevitably accumulates. So, to attract mercury ions even faster we needed to modify the surface of titanium carbide MXene flakes.
“Carboxylated titanium carbide MXene proved to be far superior to sorbent material currently being used for mercury-ion removal,” Soroush said. “Within one minute it was able to remove 95% of mercury ions from a water sample contaminated at a concentration of 50 parts per million, which means it could be effective and efficient enough for use in large scale wastewater treatment.”
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