Heavy metal contaminated surface water is one of the oldest pollution problems, which is critical to ecosystems and human health. We devised disulfide linked polymer networks and employed as a sorbent for removing heavy metal ions from contaminated water. Although the polymer network material has a moderate surface area, it demonstrated cadmium removal efficiency equivalent to highly porous activated carbon while it showed 16 times faster sorption kinetics compared to activated carbon, owing to the high affinity of cadmium towards disulfide and thiol functionality in the polymer network. The metal sorption mechanism on polymer network was studied by sorption kinetics, effect of pH, and metal complexation. We observed that the metal ions-copper, cadmium, and zinc showed high binding affinity in polymer network, even in the presence of competing cations like calcium in water.
Lithium silicate (Li 4 SiO 4 ) is a promising high temperature CO 2 sorbent because of its large CO 2 capacity at elevated temperatures with low materials cost. However, the conventional nonporous Li 4 SiO 4 shows very poor CO 2 adsorption kinetics. Thus, a Li 4 SiO 4 −TiO 2 nanotubes complex was synthesized where LiOH and fumed silica would be calcined around TiO 2 nanotubes. TiO 2 nanotubes in Li 4 SiO 4 structure functioning as open highways, lithium ions were able to channel through the bulky structure and enhance the sorption kinetics, leading the total adsorption capacity to near theoretical values. Furthermore, cyclic studies at 700 °C revealed strong stability over at least 10 cycles. These findings indicate that stability and kinetics of CO 2 sorption can be greatly improved by the nanotube composites of known adsorbents.
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