Investigation into the use of waste sources for greening the synthesis of LDH materials and developing their applications for future technologies

层状双氢氧化物(LDHs)是一类合成材料，类似于粘土水滑石等自然形成的层状矿物。它们最早发现于175年前，至今仍是众多不同领域研究的焦点。对于那些对开发新技术感兴趣的人来说，它们具有许多诱人的特性，这是因为它们的结构中很容易包含大量不同的元素，并且它们的层之间可以存储许多不同的化学物质。这使得研究人员可以针对从塑料添加剂到医疗药物控制释放的广泛不同应用来微调材料的性能。它们还可用于提高工业过程的效率或捕获潜在危险的排放物，如二氧化碳或制造过程中的毒素。如果要在工业规模上采用这些新技术，重要的是开发绿色合成方法，将其生产对环境的影响降至最低。目前的生产方法使用昂贵的金属盐，会产生大量的富盐废水。这些金属盐原料的生产需要高能量投入，这与大量温室气体排放有关。使这些过程更加绿色的一种方法是使用废旧产品作为起始材料。这降低了处理其他工业过程产生的废物的成本，从而提高了它们的经济效益。这种对潜在有毒废物中金属含量的回收与循环经济的理念相联系，在循环经济中，产品不断回收成为生产新产品所需的原材料，将开发环境中额外资源的需要降至最低。最近的研究表明，鸟粪石是一种在城市污水处理过程中提取的废物矿物，否则会导致代价高昂的管道堵塞，它可以成功地用于生产具有独特和理想性能的LDH材料，例如高密度和大表面积。这些特性很少出现在一起，是大规模处理产品作为粉末的理想选择。本项目旨在进一步发展这种方法来生产类似的LDH材料，并研究其性能，评估其他废物资源作为绿色LDH生产原料的潜力，并开发这些材料的实际用途，使其在工业生产中越来越有吸引力。本项目属于EPSRC制造未来和物理科学研究领域。

Layered double hydroxides (LDHs) are a family of synthetic materials similar to naturally occurring layered minerals such as the clay hydrotalcite. First discovered over 175 years ago, they remain the focus of much research in numerous different fields. They possess many attractive properties for those interested in developing new technologies, owing to the ease of including a large number of different elements in their structure and the many different chemicals that can be stored between their layers. This allows researchers to fine-tune the materials' properties for a wide range of different applications ranging from plastic additives to the controlled release of drugs for medical treatments. They can also be used to improve the efficiency of industrial processes or to capture potentially dangerous emissions such as carbon dioxide or toxins from manufacturing.If these new technologies are to be adopted on an industrial scale, it is important that green synthesis methods are developed to minimise the environmental impact of their production. Current production methods use expensive metal salts and produce large amounts of salt rich effluent. Production of these metal salt feedstocks requires high energy inputs which are associated with large greenhouse gas emissions. One way to make these processes greener is to use waste products as the starting materials. This reduces the cost of treating waste produced by other industrial processes, thereby increasing their economic efficiency. Such recycling of the metal content of potentially toxic waste ties in with the idea of a circular economy in which products are constantly recycled into the raw materials needed to produce new products, minimising the need to exploit the environment for additional resources.Recent work has shown Struvite, a waste mineral extracted during municipal wastewater treatment which can otherwise cause costly blockages in pipes, can be successfully used to produce LDH materials with unique and desirable properties such as both a high density and largesurface area. These properties, rarely found together, are ideal for handling the product as a powder at large scale. This project aims to further develop this method to produce similar LDH materials and investigate their properties, evaluate the potential of other waste resources as starting materials for green LDH production and develop practical uses of these materials to make them increasingly attractive for industrial manufacturing.This project falls within the EPSRC manufacturing the future and physical sciences research areas.