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，类似于天然存在的层状矿物，如粘土水滑石。它们在175年前首次被发现，至今仍是许多不同领域研究的焦点。对于那些有兴趣开发新技术的人来说，它们具有许多有吸引力的特性，因为它们的结构中很容易包含大量不同的元素，而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微调材料的性能，以适应各种不同的应用，从塑料添加剂到医学治疗药物的控制释放。它们还可用于提高工业过程的效率，或捕获制造过程中产生的二氧化碳或毒素等潜在危险排放。如果要在工业规模上采用这些新技术，重要的是要开发绿色合成方法，以尽量减少其生产对环境的影响。目前的生产方法使用昂贵的金属盐，产生大量的富盐废水。这些金属盐原料的生产需要大量的能源投入，这与大量的温室气体排放有关。使这些过程更环保的一种方法是使用废物作为起始材料。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率。这种对潜在有毒废物中金属成分的回收利用与循环经济的理念相一致，在循环经济中，产品不断被回收为生产新产品所需的原材料，最大限度地减少了利用环境获取额外资源的需要。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矿物，否则会导致昂贵的管道堵塞，可以成功地用于生产具有独特和理想性能的LDH材料，如高密度和大表面积。这些特性，很少发现在一起，是理想的处理产品作为一个大规模的粉末。该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生产起始材料的潜力，并开发这些材料的实际用途，使其在工业制造中越来越有吸引力。该项目属于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.