Arya News - Researchers from the State University of Tyumen, together with colleagues from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, India, China and Saudi Arabia, have developed and tested a material capable of “capturing” lead from water in reservoirs.
Developed as part of an international team, the material makes it faster and easier to remove the ecotoxicant from aquatic environments. The results were published in Polymer Bulletin. The main sources of heavy-metal pollution in the environment include the mining, metallurgical, electroplating and steel industries. When filtration systems at industrial facilities fail, large quantities of lead and other metal ions — toxic to bacteria, plants and mammals — can enter wastewater or natural waters, the university specialists explained.Researchers from the State University of Tyumen, together with colleagues from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, India, China and Saudi Arabia, have developed and tested a material capable of “capturing” lead from water in reservoirs.The material is based on humic acids extracted from coal.“Tests of the absorption process showed that the new material works more efficiently than existing analogue,” she added, and “the lead can be easily removed from our sorbent.” She explained that the sorbent selectively captures lead ions because it is engineered with a “memory” of their size and charge — a polymer-design technique known as molecular imprinting. The granulated sorbent can be placed directly into water and later filtered out after swelling and absorbing the lead ions. Laboratory experiments showed that one gram of the sorbent can extract 50 milligrams of lead ions from water in one hour. In the future, the researchers plan to develop molecularly imprinted polymer sorbents for other ecotoxicants such as nickel, copper and zinc. They also intend to assess the effectiveness of the new materials under real environmental conditions.