Development of nanostructured anodes for wastewater treatment

我们的合作伙伴JNE是废水处理领域的领先解决方案提供商。这一领域非常重要，因为在2012年，加拿大的废水处理成本约为44亿美元，其中约20%用于工业废水处理，其余用于市政废水处理。全球废水处理市场规模超过4500亿美元，其增长速度超过了全球GDP。有许多废水处理方法，其中最有吸引力的是电焚烧，因为它能够通过使用适当的阳极，通过施加电流有效地氧化有机污染物。其中一种是所谓的掺硼金刚石，它虽然表现出优异的性能，但并不具有成本效益；这一提议旨在寻找利用纳米结构和适当的表面物理和化学的替代阳极，以提供一种可以在工业上应用的经济替代方案。特别是，我们专注于一个有希望的三元体系，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，从而优化材料以处理选定的污染物，这是与我们的合作伙伴JNE相关的工业废水的特征。通过这种方式，我们的目标是能够找到一种经济高效的合成方法(使用低温和尺寸可伸缩)来实现高电化学性能的阳极，使我们的合作伙伴拥有独特的市场优势。拟议的项目承诺在对加拿大具有战略重要性的领域推进科学和技术，我们的合作伙伴坚定地致力于这一领域。

Our partner, JNE is a leading provider of solutions in the area of wastewater treatment. This area is of greatimportance, as in 2012, the cost of wastewater treatment in Canada was about $4.4B with about 20% of thesecosts relating to industrial wastewater treatment, and the rest to municipal wastewater treatment. The worldmarket 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.