Press Release

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal, researchers have developed polymers, which can remove highly Polar Organic Micropollutants (POMs) from water. This process will render the water safe forconsumption. 

These polymers have already been tested for polar organic micropollutants removal at the laboratory scale. Large-scale fabrication of these materials in collaboration with industrial partners will open up a promising avenue for real-time scavenging of toxic polar organic micropollutants from water. 

Called ‘Hyper-crosslinked Porous Organic Polymers’ (HPOPs), a teaspoon of the powder of these polymers will cover an internal surface area of 1,000-2,000 m²/g, which is close to10 tennis courts. 

The main advantages of these HPOPs include the large-scale fabrication using cheap and simple aromatic precursors without requiring any transition metal-based exotic catalysts and high thermal and hydrothermal stability.

The Research was led by Dr Abhijit Patra, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, IISER Bhopal, at the Functional Materials Laboratory of the Institute. This project was funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, under ‘Centre for Sustainable Treatment, Reuse and Management for Efficient, Affordable and Synergistic solutions for Water’ (WATER-IC for SUTRAM of EASY WATER) Initiative.

The findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.

Lead author Dr Abhijit Patra said, “A process called ‘Sorption’ is one of the most energy-efficient techniques to purify water from organic micropollutants. However, commonly-used carbonaceous adsorbents possess several bottlenecks such as slow uptake rate and tedious regeneration process. Therefore, we need efficient adsorbent materials that can not only scavenge highly Polar Organic Micropollutants (POMs) from water rapidly but also can be synthesized easily on a large-scale through simple fabrication techniques. This was the problem the IISER Bhopal Researchers at Functional Materials Laboratory set out to tackle.”

The researchers showed, for the first time, the evolution process of 2D nanosheets of solvent knitted HPOP from nanospheres to nanoribbons to 2D nanosheets through electron microscopy. The adsorption rate for toxic cationic dye, methylene blue (carcinogenic, teratogenic, mutagenic) by solvent knitted HPOP is one of the highest among the well-known adsorbent materials reported in the literature (17.6 g mg^-1 min^-1).The 2D sheet-like HPOP could sequester a broad-spectrum of POMs, including antibiotics, endocrine disruptors, steroid-based drugs, ionic dyes, plastic precursors, pesticides, and herbicides within 30 seconds only.

Source: Press Release, IISER Bhopal