Development of nanostructured anodes for wastewater treatment

我们的合作伙伴JNE是污水处理领域领先的解决方案提供商。这个地区是伟大的 重要的是，在2012年，加拿大的废水处理成本约为44亿美元，其中约20% 工业废水处理费用，其余为城市废水处理费用。世界 废水处理市场超过4500亿美元，并且正在以超过全球GDP的速度增长。废水处理有许多方法，其中电焚化是最有吸引力的方法之一，因为它能够通过使用适当的阳极，通过施加电力有效地氧化有机污染物。其中，所谓的硼掺杂金刚石虽然表现出优异的性能，但并不具有成本效益;该提议寻求找到利用纳米结构化和适当的表面物理和化学的替代阳极，以提供可以在工业上应用的经济替代方案。特别是，我们专注于一个有前途的三元系统，并建议从基本的角度研究这些表面上的化学反应是如何发生的，从而优化选定的污染物的材料，与我们的合作伙伴JNE相关的工业废水的特征。通过这种方式，我们的目标是能够为高电化学性能阳极确定一种具有成本效益的合成方法（使用低温，尺寸可扩展），为我们的合作伙伴提供独特的市场优势。拟议的项目有望在对加拿大具有战略重要性的领域推进科学和技术，我们的合作伙伴对此作出了坚定的承诺。

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.