PNNL

Abstract

The single most important factor in determining quality of life in human society is the availability of pure, clean drinking water. Wars have been fought, and will continue to be fought, over access and control of clean water. Drinking water has two major classes of contamination, biological contamination and chemical contamination. Bacterial contamination can be dealt with by a number of well-established technologies (e.g. chlorination, ozone, UV, etc.), but chemical contamination is a somewhat more challenging target. Common organic contaminants, such as pesticides, agricultural chemicals, industrial solvents, and fuels can be removed by treatment with UV/ozone, activated carbon or plasma technologies. Toxic heavy metals like mercury, lead and cadmium can be partially addressed by using traditional sorbent materials like alumina, but these materials bind metal ions non-specifically and can easily be saturated with harmless, ubiquitous species like calcium, magnesium and zinc (which are actually nutrients, and don’t need to be removed). Another weakness of these traditional sorbent materials is that metal ion sorption to a ceramic oxide surface is a reversible process, meaning they can easily desorb back into the drinking water supply.