Enhanced nitrates-polluted water remediation by polyurethane/sepiolite cellular nanocomposites

Phosphorus Release and Adsorption Properties of Polyurethane–Biochar Crosslinked Material as a Filter Additive in Bioretention Systems

“…When subjected to soil, water and air, the structure of polyurethane showed no significant changes, indicating the good durability of its mechanical properties in the long term [21]. On the other hand, it has been widely recognized that polyurethane foams can be employed as highly efficient adsorbents in removing heavy metals [22], ammonium [23], nitrate [24] and some organic pollutants (e.g., dialkyl phthalates [25], oils and trichloromethane [26], etc.). All these properties meet the requirements of filter additives in bioretention systems: a high hydraulic conductivity to reduce overland stormwater, a high retention volume to minimize peak flow, a good endurance to multi-field coupling effects and a high removal capacity of many contaminants from stormwater.…”

Non-Invasive Approaches for the Evaluation of the Functionalization of Melamine Foams with In-Situ Synthesized Silver Nanoparticles

“…In the past decades, the use of porous polymer structures as host materials for the production of nanocomposites has become a relevant field of research [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Among the most effective approaches to fabricate porous polymer nanocomposites, the following can be mentioned: mechanical blending [2,7,9] and surface functionalization processes [8,10] such as dip-coating [11,12], spray-coating [5], or in situ synthesis [3,6,10]. These procedures aim to take advantage of the features of both matrix and filler of the nanocomposites.…”

“…The wide availability of diverse polymers allows providing matrices with optimal features for each application, in terms of the porous structure, mechanical and thermal behavior, wettability, chemical stability, or even bio-compatibility or bio-degradability [1,4,17,18]. Second, the method selected to incorporate the filler has a crucial effect on the final properties of the nanocomposite, as most of their potential applications (e.g., water treatment, catalysis, sensoring) could require the presence of the filler on the external surface of the polymeric substrate [2,10]. Finally, it is fundamental to select a filler able to provide the desired functionality and compatible with both the polymer matrix and production route.…”

“…Finally, it is fundamental to select a filler able to provide the desired functionality and compatible with both the polymer matrix and production route. A broad range of nanofillers can be found in the literature, including clays, [2,[18][19][20] organic compounds, [11] graphene, [5,8,12], and inorganic nanoparticles (e.g., metal nanoparticles) [1,4,6,21]. In particular, noble metal nanoparticles are of great interest for their remarkable physical properties [16] such as their stability, large surface area, surface-enhanced Raman scattering, [21] surface plasmon resonance [15,21], and high interfacial reactivity [16,[22][23][24][25].…”

“…However, these techniques have significant disadvantages. They usually require complex sample preparation (time-consuming), and in terms of the nanoparticles load determination, provide only qualitative information or quantitative elemental information limited to the surface of the nanocomposite [2]. On the contrary, non-invasive techniques commonly employed on the characterization of nanocomposites, such as Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR), ultra-violet visible UV-vis, and Raman spectroscopies, are also employed to identify the presence of the nanoparticles, but present limitations to quantify their amount [21,31,33].…”