SBIR Phase I: Nanofilters for Selective Gold Extraction

小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是通过改善金属离子捕获来改善黄金提取。许多工业将越来越多的有毒重金属和贵重金属排放到不同的复杂水源中。在含有高浓度无机和有机干扰物的水混合物中，这些感兴趣的金属往往是痕量的。在这些条件下提取和浓缩这些物质是极其困难的。该项目采用新型混合材料，以高容量，快速，具有成本效益的工艺从水中选择性和快速提取痕量浓度的不同有毒，稀有和/或有价值的金属物质。这些新材料可能会影响黄金等贵重金属的开采，产生新的可持续供应来源。拟议的项目是将混合纳米多孔材料应用于过滤装置，并在工业中常见的连续流操作下评估其黄金提取性能。虽然批量吸附实验可以提供信息，初步评估吸附剂，连续固定床吸附实验必须进行，以获得其他关键信息，如穿透时间，传质区的长度和柱的最大容量在这些连续的动态条件下。目前，混合材料被合成为纳米颗粒（在250 nm和500 nm之间），太小而不能在传统的过滤器装置中实施，使得材料必须首先被最佳地成形和结构化，以防止在连续流动操作中的压降和材料损失。接下来，将进行连续流实验以研究诸如柱床长度、柱床直径、吸附剂质量、流速和分析物浓度的参数。该项目将对原型开发模型进行验证和确认。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并且通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to improve gold extraction by improving metal ion capture. Many industries discharge increasing amounts of toxic heavy and valuable metals into different complex water sources. These metals of interest tend to be at trace amounts in water mixtures containing high concentrations of inorganic and organic interferents. It is extremely difficult to extract and concentrate such species in these conditions. This project employs novel hybrid materials to selectively and rapidly extract different toxic, rare and/or valuable metal species at trace concentrations from water in a high-capacity, rapid, cost-effective process. These new materials could impact mining of valuable metals like gold, generating new sustainable supply sources. The proposed project is to implement a hybrid nano-porous material into filter devices and evaluate its gold extracting performance under a continuous flow operation typically seen in industry. Although batch adsorption experiments can provide information to initially assess adsorbents, continuous fixed-bed adsorption experiments must be conducted to obtain other crucial information such as breakthrough time, length of mass transfer zone and maximum capacity of the column under those continuous dynamic conditions. Currently, the hybrid materials are synthesized as nanoparticles (between 250 nm and 500 nm), too small to be implemented in a traditional filter device so that the materials must be optimally shaped and structured first to prevent pressure drops and loss of materials in the continuous flow operation. Next, continuous flow experiments will be conducted to study parameters such as column bed length, column bed diameter, adsorbent mass, flow rate and analyte concentration. The project will conduct verification and validation of a model for prototype development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.