Low-cost Sustainable Fibrous Materials as a Disruptive Technology for Water Treatment

全球每年的市场规模为85.4亿美元，混凝剂和絮凝剂对水处理至关重要，但也带来了巨大的经济和环境负担。为了同时处理过程可持续性，成本和效率的问题，我们设计了一种新的水处理工艺，该工艺使用基于纤维素纤维的超级桥接剂，通过增加絮凝物的尺寸和密度，显着改善沉降过程中传统和新兴污染物的去除。我们表明，原始纤维素纤维可用于显着降低水处理过程中的浊度，从而减少对混凝剂和絮凝剂的需求。此外，通过将廉价的铁（氢）氧化物接枝到回收的纤维素纤维上，所得的Fe接枝纤维可以同时吸附污染物、桥接絮凝物并增加絮凝物密度，同时减少化学品的使用。使用纤维生产的超级絮凝物的空前尺寸使得通过筛选可以轻松去除絮凝物，从而无需沉降槽，这是一个大型且昂贵的工艺单元。研究的总体目标是展示我们技术的可扩展性，旨在说服许可合作伙伴追求商业化。我们将重点展示中试规模的金属接枝纤维的安全性、可扩展性和性能。这项研究将产生有价值的数据，以证明我们的发明对全球水处理行业的商业可行性。这项工作将在几个市政和工业伙伴组织的支持下进行。这将使麦吉尔大学和合作伙伴组织能够充分评估该技术的潜力，并相应地走向商业化。可重复使用的纤维基材料与通过筛选分离相结合，将使全球水处理设施能够降低其资本和运营成本以及环境和物理足迹。由于其性能和经济性，我们的产品和相关的筛选过程有可能在全球商业化。这笔资金将大大加快我们的市场进入，使我们能够大规模展示我们的颠覆性技术的性能。

With an annual global market of $8.54 billion, coagulants and flocculants are critical to water treatment but carry a significant economic and environmental burden. To simultaneously deal with the issues of process sustainability, cost, and efficiency, we have designed a new water treatment process that uses super-bridging agents based on cellulose fibers that markedly improve the removal of conventional and emerging contaminants during settling by increasing floc size and density. We showed that pristine cellulose fibers can be used to significantly reduce turbidity during water treatment, thereby reducing the demand for coagulants and flocculants. Moreover, by grafting inexpensive iron (hydr)oxides to recycled cellulose fibers, the resulting Fe-grafted fiber can simultaneously adsorb contaminants, bridge flocs, and increase floc density, whilst reducing chemical usage. The unprecedented size of the superflocs produced using fibers enables easy floc removal by screening, eliminating the need for a settling tank, a large and costly process unit. The overall goal of the research is to demonstrate the scalability of our technology with the aim to convince licensing partners to pursue commercialization. We will focus on demonstrating the safety, scalability and performance of metal-grafted fibers at pilot-scale. This research will generate valuable data to prove the commercial viability of our invention for the global water treatment industry. The work will be undertaken with the support of several municipal and industrial partner organizations. This will allow McGill University and the partner organizations to fully assess the potential of the technology and to proceed accordingly towards commercialization. The reusable fiber-based materials combined with separation via screening will allow global water treatment facilities to reduce their capital and operating costs as well as their environmental and physical footprints. Because of their performance and affordability, our products and the associated screening process have the potential to be commercialized globally. This funding will significantly accelerate our market entry by enabling us to demonstrate the performance of our disruptive technology at scale.