Rapid industrialization, population growth and long periods of drought impose an increasing demand on clean water sources worldwide. We are witnessing an alarming contamination of surface and groundwater ecosystems with micropollutants such as antibiotics, pesticides, estrogens, industrial chemicals, pharmaceuticals etc.
In this project, we developed a new technique that uses highly porous membranes to clean the effluents of industries and municipal wastewater treatment plants. The membranes fabricated in this work have the unique ability to wirelessly generate surface charges by using clean energy sources such as magnetic fields, sunlight, and mechanical vibrations, or their combination. These surface charges then react with a wide range of problematic pollutants and degrade them into harmless compounds.
In this project we designed, constructed, and tested a portable wastewater treatment reactor that is integrated with our optimized membranes. This reactor was used to conduct various proof of concepts with our industrial customers. We have also conducted an on-site pilot with a municipal wastewater treatment plant customer using our reactor. Through these demonstrations we successfully showed the ability of our technology to remove highly persistent, mobile, and toxic micropollutants from wastewater in a sustainable, cost-effective, and efficient manner.
