What is it about?
The topic of this paper is to review some results of laboratory examinations of mostly volcanic aluminosilicates (clinoptilolite-rich tuffs, tephra, stilbite, alginite, montmorillonite, perlite product vapex) deposited in Slovak and some Chinese repositories, which were achieved during scientific cooperation. The overview is limited and highlights only those results which concern Pb(II), Al(III), PO4 3-and Sb(V) removal from aqueous solutions and also compares other pollutants such as nitrate, sulphate, azodyes and cefazoline using the above adsorbents. The paper reports several synthesis routes, by which naturally available minerals or even waste products (furnace slag), occur in both cooperating countries in vast quantities and have been combined with specific biogenic components (like surfactant, alginate and xanthan gum) in order to prepare novel functional gradient adsorbents suitable for economically and ecologically viable water decontamination. Additionally, Fe-modified zeolite and the German commercial product GEH as well as the Czech Nanofer 25S in the form of stabilized aqueous suspension of Fe(0) were used in the experiments to compare the adsorption efficiency of the above materials.
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Why is it important?
Simultaneously, nature has developed synthetic routes and design strategies to produce minerals with structures that are optimized for their particular function. Thus, the biomaterials provide a unique inspiration for materials design. Living organisms have evolved a vast diversity of structures through mechanisms that often are significantly different from those used by the materials engineers. Basically, there are several constructional processes of biomineralization like molecular preorganization, interfacial recognition, vectorial regulation and cellular processing important for tectonic strategies in materials chemistry. Above contribution was some kind of imitation or first approach to fabricate some green adsorbents or to biomineralize currently exploitable aluminosilicates. New bioinspired mineral adsorbents incl. at the nature available products were described and their benefits for the removal of pollutants from the contaminated waters discussed. Nevertheless, the main objective of this paper was to offer some inside view into this interdisciplinary science and research results obtained by the author.
Perspectives
Nowadays, there is evergrowing need to develop clean, non toxic and environmentally friendly or “green chemistry” processes and products. “Green“ designates in a novel, advanced adsorbent fabrication to adopt from the Nature bioinspiring (predominantly polysaccharide) materials and by the synthesis to mimic the exceptional features of natural species with their impressive varieties. Actually, biopolymers present fascinating templates for creating bioinorganic materials, e.g. starch that is stored in plants, meets all the required criteria for such as „green synthesis“ agent, because the structure of starch is chain shaped with many hydroxyl and carboxyl groups on its surface. Starch can be used as morphology directing, stabilizing or reductive (metal nucleation) agent. Moreover, starch swells largely under water media, while maintaining 3D network.
Prof. M.Eng. PhD. Eva Chmielewská
Comenius University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Functional Gradient Adsorbents Processed with Biogenic Components for Ecologically Benign Water Purification, Current Green Chemistry, October 2015, Bentham Science Publishers,
DOI: 10.2174/221334610204151028111435.
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