Development of nanostructured anodes for wastewater treatment

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Our partner, JNE is a leading provider of solutions in the area of wastewater treatment. This area is of great**importance, as in 2012, the cost of wastewater treatment in Canada was about $4.4B with about 20% of these**costs relating to industrial wastewater treatment, and the rest to municipal wastewater treatment. The world**market for wastewater treatment exceeds $450B US and is growing at a rate that outpaces the global GDP. There are a number of approaches to wastewater treatment among which electro-incineration is one of the most attractive owing to its ability to effectively oxidise organic pollutants by the application of electricity, by use of an appropriate anode. Among these is so called Boron doped diamond which, although showing excellent performance, is not cost effective; this proposal seeks to find alternative anodes which take advantage of nanostructuring and appropriate surface physics and chemistry, to provide an economical alternative that can be applied industrially. In particular, we focus on a promising ternary system, and propose to study from a fundamental perspective how chemical reactions on such surfaces are occurring, and hence optimise the material for selected pollutants, characteristic of industrial wastewaters relevant to our partner, JNE. In this fashion, our objective is to be able to identify a cost effective synthesis approach (using a low temperature, and size scalable) for high electrochemical performance anodes, giving our partner a unique market edge. The proposed project promises to advance science and technology in an area of strategic importance to Canada, and for which our partner is strongly committed.