Phosphate Elimination and Recovery Lightweight (PEARL) Membrane: A Sustainable Environmental Remediation Approach

Aqueous phosphate pollution can negatively impact myriad ecosystems and introduces a variety of economic and public health problems. While novel remediation tactics based on nanoparticle binding have shown considerable promise in nutrient recovery from water, they are difficult to deploy at scale. The Dravid group has developed a membrane-based platform approach for environmental remediation of aqueous pollutants. Here, a nanocomposite slurry applied to a membrane by a facile, yet effective dip-coating process serves as an affinity coating, tailored for specific pollutants. This scalable, economically viable, and environmentally friendly approach is demonstrated with our phosphate elimination and recovery lightweight (PEARL) membrane, which can selectively sequester >99% of phosphate ions from solution. Mild tuning of pH promotes at-will adsorption and desorption of nutrients, allowing for phosphate recovery and PEARL membrane reuse. Moreover, we characterize the interfaces of the structure across various length scales to unravel clues about the specific binding mechanism, which provides insight into how the PEARL membrane approach can be extended to address other pollutants. This presentation will provide details on the performance of the PEARL membrane and its structure, as well as discuss how this strategy can be extended to other emerging contaminants.

This presentation is available to AMTA Members only.