Collaborative Research: Gaining a molecular level understanding of the sorption of model organic molecules to engineered soil surrogates

该项目由化学系环境化学科学计划资助，将使路易斯安那州立大学(LSU)的Robert Cook和David Spivak教授以及宾夕法尼亚州立大学(PSU)的Karl Mueller教授能够介绍一名博士后研究员、研究生和本科生从事涉及有机化学、分析化学和环境化学的跨学科研究。招聘将侧重于来自代表性不足群体的学生，他们将被介绍给环境化学问题的复杂性。在他的研究生级别的聚合物合成课程中，斯皮瓦克教授将展示如何使用新兴的聚合物合成方法来模拟自然的一些复杂性，并帮助环境化学。库克教授(LSU)和穆勒教授(PSU)都教授高级环境化学课程，他们将结合在该奖项中开发的发现和方法，说明基本化学相互作用如何应用于环境系统，以及它们如何在确定环境中人为化学物质的命运和运输中发挥作用。本项目旨在通过研究工程土壤替代物(ESS)对模型农药分子的吸收，从分子水平上了解农药与土壤的相互作用。替代物将通过对已知矿物表面进行功能化处理来合成，这些矿物表面具有不同组成和极性的有机部分，与在真实土壤中发现的类似。同样，将不同极性和化学组成的氟化农药与一系列核磁共振方法相结合，将能够在分子水平上表征相互作用。核磁共振实验将得到批量吸附研究的指导和补充，这些研究将报告相应的宏观行为。这项工作的更广泛影响包括改进命运和运输模型，更好地使用和设计农药的做法，以及增加对非共价相互作用的理解。这些详细的研究将提供对污染物如何与土壤相互作用和关联的分子水平的洞察。

The funding of this project by the Environmental Chemical Sciences program in the Division of Chemistry will enable Professors Robert Cook and David Spivak of Louisiana State University (LSU) and Karl Mueller of Pennsylvania State University (PSU) to introduce a postdoctoral fellow, graduate students, and undergraduate students to interdisciplinary research involving organic, analytical, and environmental chemistry. Recruitment will focus on students from underrepresented groups who will be introduced to the complexity of environmental chemical issues. In his graduate-level polymer synthesis class, Professor Spivak will show how emerging methods of polymer synthesis can be used to mimic some of nature's complexity and can aid environmental chemistry. Professors Cook (LSU) and Mueller (PSU), both of whom teach senior-level environmental chemistry courses, will incorporate findings and approaches developed in this award to illustrate how fundamental chemical interactions apply to environmental systems and how they play a role in the determination of the fate and transport of anthropogenic chemicals in the environment. This project is aimed at a molecular level understanding of how pesticides interact with soils by studying the uptake of model pesticide molecules by engineered soil surrogates (ESS). Surrogates will be synthesized by functionalizing known mineral surfaces with organic moieties of varying composition and polarity, echoing those found in real soil. Similarly, incorporating fluorinated pesticides of varied polarities and chemical compositions, in concert with a range of NMR methods, will enable molecular level characterization of the interactions. The NMR experiments will be guided and complemented by batch sorption studies, which will report the corresponding macroscopic behavior. Broader impacts of this work include improvement of fate and transport modeling, better practices for pesticide use and design, and an increased understanding of non-covalent interactions. These detailed studies will provide molecular level insights into how pollutants interact and associate with soils.