Designing adsorbents and catalysts for wastewater treatment

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Designing adsorbents and catalysts for wastewater treatment

Amane Jada
Contact : amane.jada@uha.fr

Designing adsorbents and catalysts for wastewater treatment

Environmental pollution, resulting from excessive discharges of toxic organic molecules from different types of industries, has become a global world issue. The traditional treatment methods used, such as adsorption, flocculation, membrane filtration and biodegradation, remain helpless to remove these organic pollutants from water, due mainly to their low biodegradability. Furthermore, these conventional methods are unfortunately not always very selective, and their non-destructive nature leads to the formation of sludge. We are currently working on other processes such as advanced oxidation processes (AOP), which produce highly reactive oxygen species (ROS) from various peroxides. Our research activities at IS2M (Mulhouse-France) and also abroad, at Ibn Zohr University (Agadir-Morocco), aim to develop new AOP catalysts based on polymers, bio-sourced materials, inorganic particles or composites, encapsulated in calcium alginate beads. Encapsulation allows the catalyst to be recovered and recycled, as well as to preserve and maintain its interesting properties for a long time. These AOP catalysts have proven effective in removing and degrading organic pollutants present in aquatic systems such as dyes and pharmaceutical products, without any external light energy input, and they can be recycled without altering their structures. The results obtained are promising for large-scale application. In addition to the experimental identification of the ROS, our research also aims to elucidate the radical and the 1O2-based non-radical mechanisms describing the peroxide activation.

Synergistic enhancement of pollutant removal from water by using BiOCl/ BiOBr heterojunction on clay surface and sunlight irradiation