Access to drinking water is one of the largest health problems. Heavy metals are considered the primary pollutants released during unregulated mining or electronics and battery manufacturing. One of the possible solutions is sorption – a promising water treatment technology due to its simplicity.
The research teams of Radek Zbořil and Pavel Hobza from IOCBPrague and RCPTM studied densely functionalized graphene bearing covalently attached carboxyl groups - graphene acid (GA), an unexplored material with a potential application in the sorption of heavy metals. The advantages of GA are its open two-dimensional structure and high stability.
The researchers discovered that GA could remove highly toxic metals (e.g., Cd and Pb) with excellent efficiency. The sorption process is functional even in a competing environment caused by the presence of ions, which generally occur in the drinking water. Simple washing with 1% HCl solution is sufficient for desorption of the heavy metal ions, which leads to a full recovery of the sorbent. The technology can be used for noble metal recovery. The results of the experimental and computational studies were published in ACS Nano.
Read the paper: Kolařík, J.; Bakandritsos, A.; Bad’ura, Z.; Lo, R.; Zoppellaro, G.; Kment, Š.; Naldoni, A.; Zhang, Y.; Petr, M.; Tomanec, O.; Filip, J.; Otyepka, M.; Hobza, P.; Zbořil, R. Carboxylated Graphene for Radical-Assisted Ultra-Trace-Level Water Treatment and Noble Metal Recovery. ACS Nano 2021, 15, 3349-3358. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.0c10093