Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology

Nanoporous materials in wastewater treatment: How to improve their retention performance towards ionic pollutants in multi-component aqueous streams?

World Congress on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

October 16-17, 2017 Dubai, UAE

Jerzy Zajac

University of Montpellier, France

Keynote: J Nanomed Nanotechnol

Abstract:

Nowadays, many industries remain dependent on processes that produce wastewaters of a complex composition. There is a growing consensus in the research community about the deep implications the co-occurrence of various pollutants in complex aqueous streams may have for the efficiency of removal technologies. Among a variety of wastewater treatment technologies used to attain the Zero Pollution objective, sorption onto solid materials offers much promise, mainly because of the reduction of the volume of solid wastes to be stored in landfills and the reversibility of the phenomenon thus allowing the raw materials to be preserved. The important advances in the synthesis and investigation of functional nanostructured materials have attracted the interest of researchers and engineers working in the area of environmental remediation. The potential ecotoxicity and difficulty of use of nanoparticles rather limit their application, whereas nanoporous sorbents offer new advantages based on their size-dependent performance. Very systematic studies have been made for years in Montpellier on the sorption mechanisms of hazardous ionic species (e.g., heavy metal cations, oxyanions, ionic dyes and surfactants) onto inorganic solids possessing regular nanoporosity (e.g., zeolites, mesoporous aluminosilicates, layered mineral oxides). Combined use of various experimental techniques supplemented by appropriate modeling studies has shed light on the physical and chemical characteristics of sorbents crucial to the improvement of their retention performance in multi-component aqueous solutions. It is clear that an efficient wastewater treatment cannot be based only on a simple ion-exchange mechanism. Firstly, it is important to make short-range bonding forces involved in the retention of ionic species. Secondly, the confinement effects due to the adsorbent porosity and accompanied by some changes in the hydration layers surrounding the adsorbing ions also contribute to ensure a good selectivity of the treatment process. They will be thoroughly discussed and illustrated by numerous examples. Recent Publications 1. Darmograi G, Prelot B, Geneste A, Martin-Gassin G, Salles F, Zajac J (2016) How Does Competition between Anionic Pollutants Affect Adsorption onto Mg-Al Layered Double Hydroxide? Three Competition Schemes. J. Phys Chemistry C; 120: 10410-10418. 2. Darmograi G, Prelot B, Layrac, G, Tichit D, Martin-Gassin G, Salles F, Zajac J (2015) Study of Adsorption and Intercalation of Orange-Type Dyes into Mgâ??Al Layered Double Hydroxide. J. Phys Chem C; 119: 23388-23397.

Biography :

Jerzy Zajac is the Head of the Laboratory of Aggregates, Interfaces and Materials for Energy (AIME) belonging to the Charles Gerhardt Institute of Montpellier. His research interest and expertise is focused on the thermodynamics and modeling of interfacial phenomena occurring at solid-liquid, solid-gas and liquid-liquid interfaces and colloidal phenomena in solutions of surfactants and polymers, as well as the conception and preparation of porous multifunctional materials for high-added-value applications in the field of environmental remediation and liquid phase heterogeneous catalysis. He teaches at the University of Montpellier on fundamentals of inorganic and physical chemistry of the undergraduate program, as well as on colloids and interfacial phenomena at the master’s level.