Professor Park Chi-team Young’s created an unusual porous polymer material that can totally remove phenolic organic pollutants from water at ultra-high speeds.
Based on the photothermal effect, the porous material created can successfully remove not only microplastics in water but also very small-sized volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Simultaneously, it is projected to be used as a high-efficiency adsorption material that can be commercialized in the future due to its raw material cost competitiveness and ability to enable a solar-based water purification process.
Water pollution caused by the chemical industry’s rapid development is a critical issue, and many water-purifying technologies and materials have been developed to solve this issue.
Existing adsorption processes for carbon-based porous materials have limitations in that the adsorption rate is sluggish and significant heat energy is required for recycling.
While numerous materials have been created to improve pollutant removal effectiveness, it has been challenging to design materials that fulfill good recyclability, high efficiency, raw material economic efficiency and industrialization potential all at the same time.
Professor Park Chi-Young of the DGIST Department of Energy Science and Engineering and his team have now succeeded in synthesizing a porous polymer with good adsorption performance and photothermal characteristics by reacting with an affordable and effective precursor.
In addition, an additional oxidation reaction was performed on the polymer, and the findings were used to introduce a hydrophilic functional group to enable quick adsorption of micropollutants in the aquatic environment.
Furthermore, testing indicated that the polymer created by the study team does not require high thermal energy for recycling and can be reused numerous times without deterioration in performance.
Through the new polymer’s ability to absorb light broadly and transform the absorbed light into heat, the research team created a water treatment membrane capable of evaporating water utilizing solar energy as a driving force.
As a result, it was demonstrated that a water treatment membrane coated with an oxidized polymer could cleanse phenolic pollutants using sunlight.
Professor Park Chi-Young of the DGIST Department of Energy Science and Engineering stated, “The method we created here is unique in terms of purification efficiency, removing more than 99.9% of phenolic microplastics and VOC pollutants in water at ultra-high rates. We anticipated that it would be a universal technology with high economic efficiency, capable of purifying dirty water and supplying potable water even in locations without power.”
The findings of the study were chosen and published in Advanced Materials.
Source: DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology)
