posted on 2023-05-10, 20:18authored byBenjamin Shindel, Stephanie M. Ribet, Caroline Harms, Vikas Nandwana, Vinayak P. Dravid
The presence of heavy metals in our water supply poses
an immense
global public health burden. Heavy metal consumption is tied to increased
mortality and a wide range of insidious health outcomes. In recent
years, great strides have been made toward nanotechnological approaches
for environmental problems, specifically the design of 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. Here, we report a methodology
for loading nanomaterial coatings onto adsorbent membranes, testing
different coatings against one another, and leveraging these materials
under a variety of conditions. Our tailored coating for lead remediation,
made from manganese-doped goethite nanoparticles, can filter lead
from contaminated water to below detectable levels when coated onto
a cellulose membrane, and the coated membrane can be recovered and
reused for multiple cycles through mild tuning of pH. The Nano-SCHeMe
methodology demonstrates a platform approach for effectively deploying
nanomaterials for environmental applications and for direct and fair
comparisons among these nanomaterials. Moreover, this approach is
flexible and expansive in that our coatings have the potential to
be applied to a range of sorbents.