Monitoring and treatment of selected nanoparticles

Abstract

With their increasing use, nanoparticles will become concentrated in urban effluents in the future. Both adequate monitoring methods and water treatment technologies will be necessary to assess and avoid consumer exposure. This paper reports results in these two challenging areas for both organic and inorganic nanoparticles. Treatment experiments indicate that lamellar settling is better adapted than dissolved air flotation for SiO(2) nanoparticles removal. The use of 120 mg/L of Aqualenc coagulant without flocculant addition allows 99% removal to be achieved for an initial concentration of 1 g/L. On the other hand, the dissolved air flotation process implemented under the usual industrial conditions does not permit removal of SiO(2) nanoparticles. In this case SiO(2) removal occurs only by settling in the flocculator tank. Application of a high resolution liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) technique to a small selection of treated urban effluents indicates that C(60) fullerenes are not yet widely distributed in effluents; however non-point sources cannot be entirely ruled out.

First determination of fullerenes in the Austrian market and environment: quantitative analysis and assessment

“…Already substantial measuring values of fullerene concentrations became certain in some studies of sewage sludge, waste water, and soil samples, as for example, Farre et al ( 2010 ) and Emke et al ( 2015 ) reported in Spain, Bruchet et al ( 2013 ) in France, Carboni et al ( 2016 ) in the Netherlands, and Sanchís et al ( 2012 ) in the atmosphere of the Mediterranean Sea of Barcelona, Istanbul, and Alexandria. Due to the absence of standardized measuring methods in Austria, there are currently no data available for a quantitative exposure estimation.…”