Biosorption in Effective Separation of Targeted Species from Multi-Component Systems

生物吸附是一种使用廉价的非生物材料来隔离感兴趣的化学物种的过程。它引起了人们的极大兴趣，特别是在由工业废旧生物材料、副产品或具有成本效益的可再生材料制成的生物吸附材料方面。生物吸附在废水处理、气体分离净化、化学分离等方面有着广泛的应用。该生物吸附研究计划的长期目标是开发创新技术，以配制和表征基于生物材料的吸附剂，并为环境、能源、化学、制药和生物医学应用建立高效、低成本的吸附工艺。因此，它解决了环境和社会经济需求。 在过去的六年中，申请人的研究小组在实现上述研究目标方面取得了重大进展。以大麦秸秆为原料，研制了高效吸附模拟废水中新型抗生素污染物左氧氟沙星和诺氟沙星的吸附剂。此外，还建立了变压吸附(PSA)工艺，利用新型菜籽粕吸附颗粒选择性脱除丁醇-水蒸气混合物中的水分，得到高纯度的生物燃料丁醇。然而，用于处理扩展的紧急药物污染物的生物吸附剂的特性需要进一步确定。例如，卡马西平(用于治疗神经性疼痛和癫痫)是水体中最常见的药物污染物之一，目前的技术无法有效地将其从水中去除。此外，为了净化生物燃料蒸汽或气体，需要提高生物吸附颗粒的稳定性，同时需要更好地了解生物吸附机理。 在未来5年，申请者将专注于开发新的生物吸附技术，既能减少各种工业过程对环境的影响，又能利用丰富的可利用的农业残留物，如油菜籽秸秆、麦秆、亚麻屑等。相应的短期目标是： 1)研制并表征了有效去除水中药物污染物卡马西平的新型生物吸附剂。 2)开发和表征具有更高密度、容量、选择性、稳定性和可重复使用性的新型生物吸附颗粒，用于从气相中吸附水蒸气。 3)使用目标2中的新型生物吸附剂建立和优化变压吸附工艺，以降低成本干燥生物醇和天然气。 该研究计划将导致创新的生物吸附技术在环境和能源应用中的应用。它将极大地促进对生物吸附技术和生物材料/材料科学与工程的了解。它还将提供该领域的2名博士、2名硕士和10名本科生的培训。

Biosorption is a process that uses inexpensive non-living biomaterials to sequester chemical species of interest. It has attracted great interest particularly in regards to biosorbents made from industrial waste biomaterials, by-products, or cost-effective renewable materials. Biosorption has diverse applications in wastewater treatment, gas separation and purification, and chemical separation. The long-term goal of this biosorption research program is to develop innovative technologies to formulate and characterize biomaterial-based adsorbents as well as establish high-efficiency, low-cost adsorption processes for environmental, energy, chemical, pharmaceutical, and biomedical applications. As such, it addresses environmental and socio-economic needs. During the past six years, significant progress has been made by the applicant's research group towards the above-stated research goal. Adsorbents were developed from barley straw to effectively adsorb emerging antibiotic pollutants levofloxacin and norfloxacin from simulated wastewater. In addition, a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) process was established using novel canola meal-based adsorbent particles to selectively remove water from butanol-water vapor mixtures and achieve biofuel butanol of high purity. However, the characteristics of biosorbents for treating extended emergent pharmaceutical pollutants need to be further determined. For example, carbamazepine (used to treat neuropathic pain and epilepsy) is one of the most commonly detected pharmaceutical pollutants in water bodies and cannot be effectively removed from water by current technologies. In addition, the stability of biosorbent pellets needs to be enhanced for purification of biofuel vapors or gases, along with greater understanding of the biosorption mechanisms. In the next five years, the applicant will focus on the development of novel biosorption technologies with the two-fold benefit of reducing environmental impacts of various industrial processes while utilizing abundantly available agricultural residues such as canola straw, wheat straw, flax shives, and so on. The corresponding short-term objectives are to: 1) Formulate and characterize novel biosorbents for effectively removing the pharmaceutical pollutant carbamazepine from water. 2) Develop and characterize cost-effective novel biosorbent pellets with enhanced density, capacity, selectivity, stability, and reusability for adsorption of water vapor from the gas phase. 3) Establish and optimize the PSA process using the novel biosorbents from Objective 2 for drying bioalcohols and natural gas at reduced costs. The research program will lead to innovative biosorption technologies for environmental and energy applications. It will contribute significantly to advancing knowledge of biosorption technology and biomaterial/material science and engineering. It will also provide training of 2 PhD, 2 MSc, and 10 undergraduate students in the field.