AS-sure: A New Technology for Delivering Safe Drinking Water

AS-sure：提供安全饮用水的新技术

• 批准号: NE/H018298/1
• 负责人: Dominik Weiss
• 金额: $ 10.05万
• 依托单位: Imperial College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Training Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2010 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FH018298%2F1
• 关键词: sure; New; Technology; Delivering; Safe

The pollution of groundwater with arsenic through natural or anthropogenic processes, and the subsequent long-term exposure through drinking water, threatens human health on a global scale. Though serious risks are known to occur in developing countries such as Bangladesh, China and India, high blood concentrations have been found in the UK with the residents of Devon and Cornwall. Due to the severe health effects of arsenic (the most toxic element known to humans), most governments worldwide including the US and UK have recently lowered the admissible arsenic concentration in drinking water to 10 ng/ml. Achieving these new stringent threshold values poses real challenges to the water industry and current treatment devices struggle to meet these criteria. One of the foremost reasons for these failures is that the processes currently employed (namely adsorption on iron and activated aluminium oxide substrates) are adversely affected by the presence of small concentrations of phosphorous and silica in the waters, which in turn significantly diminish the performance and life span of the treatment plants. Here we suggest a novel approach based on a combination of two different sorbents, with different treatment tasks. The first stage is composed of a bi-composite synthesised of TiO2 and Fe2O3. This device has been designed to remove phosphorus and silica from the waters and to oxidise any arsenic(III) that might be present to arsenic(V) (i.e. arsenate). This pre-treated water then passes through a second stage, which is composed of an arsenic specific chemical receptor. This second treatment step will be based on metallo-receptors with high affinity for oxoanions such as arsenate. The ultimate outcome of the project is a novel low cost water treatment device using the technologies described above with a long live span that will remove arsenic from water below the levels currently considered to be unacceptable. In order to understand the mechanisms of the arsenic interaction with the bi-composite and the metallo-receptor, we will conduct extensive chemisorptive studies of the functionalised materials and determine the key factors that need optimising for efficient binding. This work will include spectroscopic investigation using various techniques such as synchrotron radiation and nuclear magnetic resonance. Our findings will also have fundamental implications on our understanding of the environmental chemistry of arsenic and oxyanions in groundwater.

通过自然或人为过程对地下水的污染，以及随后通过饮用水的长期暴露，威胁到全球范围的人类健康。尽管已知在孟加拉国，中国和印度等发展中国家存在严重的风险，但在英国发现了德文郡和康沃尔郡的居民，在英国发现了高血液浓度。由于砷（人类已知的最毒性元素）的严重健康影响，包括美国和英国在内的大多数政府最近将饮用水中可接受的砷浓度降低至10 ng/ml。实现这些新的严格阈值值对水行业和当前的治疗设备构成了真正的挑战，难以满足这些标准。这些故障的最大原因之一是，当前使用的过程（即铁和活化的氧化铝底物上的吸附和活化的氧化铝底物）受到在水中存在少量的磷酸和硅胶的不利影响，这又显着降低了治疗厂的性能和寿命。在这里，我们建议一种基于两种不同吸附剂以及不同治疗任务的组合的新方法。第一阶段由由TIO2和FE2O3合成的双复合材料组成。该设备的设计目的是从水中去除磷和二氧化硅，并氧化可能存在于砷（V）（即砷酸盐）的任何砷（III）。然后，预处理的水经过第二阶段，该阶段由砷特异性化学受体组成。第二个治疗步骤将基于对氧化氧化物（例如砷）的高亲和力的金属受体。该项目的最终结果是使用上面描述的具有漫长的实时跨度的技术新型低成本水处理装置，该技术将从当前被认为是不可接受的水平以下的水中去除砷。为了了解砷相互作用与双重复合材料和金属感受器的机制，我们将对功能化材料进行广泛的化学发音研究，并确定需要优化有效结合的关键因素。这项工作将包括使用各种技术（例如同步加速器辐射和核磁共振）进行的光谱研究。我们的发现还将对我们对地下水中砷和氧气环境化学的理解具有根本的影响。