Multifunctional sustainable adsorbents for water treatment assisted with plasma technologies and for health protection from xenobiotics

饮用水污染是一个紧迫的全球健康问题，特别是在农村地区，而且与贫困和脆弱人口高度相关。这一挑战需要一种单一、易于操作和低成本的解决方案，能够在一个简单的锅中将病原体、化学和辐射危害的水平降低到可容忍的水平(从玻璃上的吸附剂到更强大的冷等离子体技术)。此外，气候变化、自然灾害和乌克兰的实际战争要求有可用的快速有效的解决办法，以避免水媒传染病的传播和暴露在不安全水平的重金属或危险有机污染物中。这种污染的复杂性，包括有机/无机物种、阳离子/阴离子物种、不同大小和形状等，需要一种药片或整体形式的多组分系统和/或装置，能够同时具体处理这些危害中的每一种。此外，除了解决水中的问题外，这种多组分系统还可以制备和/或修饰成生物相容的，以便它还可以用作饮食补充剂，以减轻/消除对人体的所有这些危害(作为肠道吸附剂)。基于这些前提，清洁水项目的主要目标是设计和开发由安全材料(如活性碳、骨炭、果胶等)组合而成的多组分吸附剂，能够在单个锅中消除饮用水中的这些污染物，或与冷等离子体组合以完全销毁。此外，这种吸附剂将进行相应的修改，以应用于人体作为饮食补充剂，以消除这些物种一旦被人体同化。

Contamination of drinking-water is an urgent global health concern, preferentially in rural areas, and is highly related to the poor and vulnerable population. This challenge requires a single, easy to handle and low-cost solution able to decrease the levels of pathogens, chemical and radiological hazards to tolerable levels in a single and simple pot (from a sorbent on a glass to a more powerful cold plasma technology). Furthermore, climate change, natural disasters and the actual war in Ukraine urges having available fast effective solutions to avoid the spread of waterborne epidemies and being exposed to unsafe levels of heavy metals or hazardous organic pollutants. The complexity of such contamination including organic/inorganic species, cationic/anionic species, different size and shape, etc., requires a multicomponent system and/or device, in the form of a tablet or monolith, able to tackle specifically each of these hazards at once. In addition, this multicomponent system, besides tacking the problem in water, can be prepared and/or modified to be biocompatible so that it can also be used as a dietary complement to mitigate/remove all these hazards in human body (as enterosorbent). Based on these premises, the main goal of the CLEANWATER project is the design and development of multicomponent sorbents prepared by the combination of safe materials (e.g., activated carbons, bone-chars, pectins, among others) able to eliminate these contaminants in drinking water in a single pot or in combination with cold plasma for complete destruction. Furthermore, this sorbent will be modified accordingly to be applied in human body as a dietary complement to remove these species once assimilated in the body.