Publications by authors named "Pedro Manuel Martins"
Over the last decades, the growing contamination of wastewater, mainly caused by industrial processes, improper sewage, natural calamities, and a variety of anthropogenic activities, has caused an increase in water-borne diseases. Notably, industrial applications require careful consideration as they pose significant threats to human health and ecosystem biodiversity due to the production of persistent and complex contaminants. The present work reports on the development, characterization, and application of a poly (vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) porous membrane for the remediation of a wide range of contaminants from wastewater withdrawn from industrial applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Contaminants of emerging concern, like pharmaceuticals, are increasingly threatening water sources and impacting human health and ecosystems, with niflumic acid (NFA) being particularly problematic due to its non-biodegradability.
- A TiO/PVDF-TrFE nanocomposite membrane was developed and effectively used in a photocatalytic membrane reactor, achieving a 91% degradation rate of NFA after 6 hours under solar light at neutral pH.
- An artificial neural network (ANN) was created to model the degradation process, showing a strong correlation with experimental data and highlighting that irradiation time is the most critical factor in enhancing NFA degradation efficiency.
Two significant limitations of using TiO nanoparticles for water treatment applications are reduced photocatalytic activity under visible radiation and difficulty recovering the particles after use. In this study, round-shaped Ag@TiO nanocomposites with a ≈21 nm diameter and a bandgap energy of 2.8 eV were synthesised by a deposition-precipitation method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF