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质的过程。它引起了人们极大的兴趣，特别是在由工业废物生物材料、副产品或具有成本效益的可再生材料制成的生物吸附剂方面。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。这项生物吸附研究计划的长期目标是开发创新技术，以制定和表征基于生物材料的吸附剂，并建立高效，低成本的吸附工艺，用于环境，能源，化学，制药和生物医学应用。因此，它解决了环境和社会经济需求。在过去六年中，申请人的研究小组在上述研究目标方面取得了重大进展。以大麦秸秆为原料制备吸附剂，对模拟废水中新出现的抗生素污染物左氧氟沙星和诺氟沙星进行了有效吸附。此外，利用新型油菜籽粕基吸附颗粒，建立了变压吸附（PSA）工艺，选择性地去除丁醇-水蒸气混合物中的水分，获得高纯度的生物燃料丁醇。然而，生物吸附剂处理大面积突发药物污染物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）是水体中最常检测到的药物污染物之一，目前的技术无法有效地从水中去除。此外，生物吸附颗粒的稳定性需要加强，以净化生物燃料蒸气或气体，以及对生物吸附机制的更多了解。在未来五年内，申请人将专注于开发新的生物吸附技术，以减少各种工业过程对环境的影响，同时利用丰富的农业残留物，如油菜籽秸秆，小麦秸秆，亚麻屑等。相应的短期目标是：1)制备和表征新型生物吸附剂，以有效去除水中的药物污染物卡马西平。2)开发和表征具有成本效益的新型生物吸附剂颗粒，具有增强的密度，容量，选择性，稳定性和可重复使用性，用于吸附气相中的水蒸气。3)建立并优化使用目标2中新型生物吸附剂的PSA工艺，以降低成本干燥生物醇和天然气。该研究项目将为环境和能源应用带来创新的生物吸收技术。它将大大促进生物吸附技术和生物材料/材料科学与工程的知识。还将提供该领域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.