Novel Adsorbent Materials for Wastewater Treatment

With increasing global industrialization hazardous pollutants such as heavy metals organiccompounds and pesticides are being produced in greater quantities by chemical agriculturalpharmaceutical and many other industries. Since these pollutants pose serious environmentaland health threats environmental regulations require that they are removed from wastestreams such as wastewater before discharging into the environment or reuse. Adsorption isthe most favorable method used to remove pollutants from wastewater due to its efficiencyhigh adsorption capacity and low operational cost.Innovative composite adsorbents based on woody biomass materials have been successfullydeveloped in Phase I with superior adsorption performance for wastewater treatmentapplications. Woody biomass materials were uniquely formulated with an inorganic precursormaterial and then underwent an innovative activation and conversion process to producehighly porous composite adsorbents. The composite adsorbents demonstrated exceptionalinorganic and organic pollutant removing capabilities for a wide variety of pollutants that wereunmatched by commonly used individual adsorbents.In Phase II work will be conducted to scale up and optimize the composite adsorbent materialformulation and fabrication process. A pilot production system will be built to demonstrate theconcept at a larger scale. From the pilot scale data performance and economic evaluations willbe performed to verify the advantages of the proposed adsorbents over traditional adsorbents.The successful development of the novel adsorbents using woody biomass will contribute toincreased utilization of woody resources for value-added products from wood and otheragricultural materials improve water quality and conservation through effective wastewatertreatment and reuse enhance economic opportunity and quality of life for people in ruralareas and improve the global competiveness of the manufacturing sector in the United States.