Research

Material Synthesis and Development for Utilization in Land and Water Reclamation

Adsorption is one of the most efficient ways to remove pollutants from contaminated land and water. Low cost and high efficiency adsorbents would increase the economic efficiency, which is especially beneficial to large scale land and water reclamation approaches. Materials are currently under development for the purpose of adsorbing pollutants in either organic or inorganic form. Most of the projects are using natural materials or industry by-products as raw materials, which have low or no cost. These include sludge based adsorbents, wood based cellulose nanofibrils, biochar from various sources, biopolymers from poultry feather keratin and nanohumus. Carbon xerogels of high porosity and surface area are also being synthetized and modified, tailoring their physical and/or chemical properties to optimize their performance for practical applications. This research will result in recovery of heavy metals, dissolved and colloidal organic matter from process waters; novel amendments to ameliorate soil properties and improve soil quality; and development of clean energy and mining processes with minimal environmental footprints.

Researchers are:

  • Developing high efficient adsorbents for land and water reclamation through facial modification.
  • Testing adsorbents for removal of metals such as arsenic, copper and selenium and organic compounds such as naphthenic acids from process water generated by energy systems.
  • Testing biochars and nanohumus in the field to improve soil quality for land reclamation.
  • Conducting life cycle assessment of developed adsorbents to identify the most cost-effective and environmentally sustainable options.
  • Investigating potential to scale up preparation and application of adsorbents for industry.

PIs: Mohamed Gamal El-Din, M Anne Naeth, Dev Jennings, Yaman Boluk, Scott Chang, Tariq Siddique, Aman Ullah

HQP: Muhammad Arshad, Chelsea Benally, Jinhyeob Kwak, Mingyu Li, Selamawit Messele, Siyuan Wang, Irum Zahara, Yihan Zhao