I-Corps: Materials and methods for enhanced water purification

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发新的材料和工艺，以消除饮用水中的自然和人为污染物。有些地区无法连续从公用事业机构获得清洁饮用水。通常，水处理设施不能在消毒步骤和分配之前轻易地从水源中去除有机污染物。这项技术可能会去除导致这些有害和受监管的消毒副产品的分子污染物。与这项技术相关的最大商业影响可能是在急性自然或人为事件期间从水中去除污染物。干旱或洪水会增加自然供水中的污染物。极端天气还可能因洪水而扰乱供水，特别是当废水排入供水系统时。石油泄漏、管道泄漏和煤灰池破裂等工业事故可能会导致整个城市的供水中断数周或更长时间。这里开发的材料和工艺可以为这些紧急或紧急管理事件而设计。这个i-Corps项目展示了一种从天然水和经处理的水中去除分子和离子污染物的技术平台的开发。这项技术在去除似乎最顽固的、可能对人类健康造成潜在危害的最小分子方面，优于目前的方法。这个项目的智力优势集中在这个具有可控形态的功能化材料的灵活平台上。合成的短齐聚物具有吸附各种水污染物的特定功能。这些低聚物被功能化成支架材料，并形成接触树脂，以非常快的速度吸附高容量的分子物种。控制脚手架的形态的能力允许保持暴露在受污染水中的高表面积。此外，孔隙率保持足够高，以允许水处理的快速过滤方法。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of new materials and processes for removing natural and anthropogenic contaminants from drinking water. There are areas that do not have continuous access to clean drinking water from a public utility. Often water treatment facilities are not able to easily remove organic contaminants from the water source before the disinfection step and distribution. This technology potentially removes the molecular contaminants that lead to these harmful and regulated disinfection byproducts. The largest commercial impact related to the technology is likely from removing contaminants from water during acute natural or anthropogenic events. Drought or floods can increase contaminants into the natural water supply. Extreme weather can also disrupt water supplies due to flooding, especially when waste water is discharged into the water supply. Industrial accidents like petroleum spills, pipeline leaks, and coal ash pond breaches can disrupt the water supply of an entire city for weeks or longer. The materials and processes developed here can be designed for these acute or emergency management events.This I-Corps project demonstrates the development of a technology platform to remove molecular and ionic contaminant from natural waters and from treated water. The technology outperforms current methods at removing the smallest molecules that seem to be the most recalcitrant and can be potentially harmful to human health. The intellectual merit of this project centers upon this flexible platform of functionalized materials with controllable morphology. Short oligomers are synthesized with specific functionality to adsorb various water contaminants. These oligomers are functionalized to scaffolding materials and form a contact resin that adsorbs a high capacity of molecular species in a very rapid rate. The ability to control the morphology of the scaffolding allows maintenance of the high surface area exposed to the contaminated water. Moreover, the porosity is kept high enough to allow a fast-filtration method of water treatment.