I-Corps: Novel Adsorbents for Water Treatment

该技术由美国国家科学基金会I/UCRC水与环境技术（WET）开发，涉及新型吸附材料，可用于有效去除水中的有机污染物和悬浮颗粒。使用后，可就地再生，恢复其去除污染物的能力。然后，这些材料可以重新用于水处理。拟议的工作将解决该技术商业化所面临的挑战，包括试点规模的示范。该技术将为水和废水的处理提供一种成本效益高、环境可持续的解决方案。与工业上广泛用于水和废水处理的其他工艺（如活性炭吸附和空气剥离）不同，该技术不会产生二次废物，因为所吸附的污染物被破坏了。市政供水和污水处理公司、需要处理废水的制造业、销售使用点水过滤器的公司和提供水处理解决方案的公司都会对拟议的工作感兴趣。此外，该项目将提供一种新的吸附材料，用于去除水中的有机污染物和悬浮颗粒，从而推动环境科学和工程领域的最新技术。活性炭（AC）已被美国环保署指定为去除水中有机污染物的最佳可用技术（BAT），在世界范围内得到了广泛的应用；因此，作为交流电的卓越替代品，拟议的技术有巨大的市场机会。

The proposed technology was developed in the NSF I/UCRC for Water and Environmental Technology (WET), and involves novel adsorbent material that can be used to efficiently remove organic contaminants and suspended particles from water. After use, it can be regenerated in-situ and its capacity to remove contaminants is recovered. The material can then be reused for water treatment. The proposed work will address the challenges identified for the commercialization of this technology, including a pilot scale demonstration. The proposed technology would provide a cost efficient and environmentally sustainable solution to treat water and wastewater. Unlike other processes, such as activated carbon adsorption and air stripping which are widely used in the industry for water and wastewater treatment, the proposed technology does not create a secondary waste since the adsorbed contaminants are destroyed. The proposed work would be of interest to municipal water and wastewater utilities, manufacturing industry that need to treat their wastewater, companies that market point-of-use water filters and companies that provide water treatment solutions. In addition, the project would advance the state of the art in environmental science and engineering fields by providing a new adsorbent material for the removal of organic contaminants and suspended particles from water. Activated carbon (AC) has been designated as the Best Available Technology (BAT) by the US EPA for the removal of organic contaminants from water, and is very widely used world-wide; hence, there is tremendous market opportunity for the proposed technology as a superior replacement to AC.