Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal that causes human health problems and environmental contamination. In this study, an ion exchange membrane bioreactor (IEMB) process was developed to achieve Hg(II) removal from drinking water and industrial effluents. Hg(II) transport through a cation exchange membrane was coupled with its bioreduction to Hg(0) in order to achieve Hg removal from concentrated streams, with minimal production of contaminated by-products observed. This study involves (1) membrane selection, (2) demonstration of process effectiveness for removing Hg from drinking water to below the 1ppb recommended limit, and (3) process application for treatment of concentrated water streams, where >98% of the Hg was removed, and the throughput of contaminated water was optimised through membrane pre-treatment. The IEMB process represents a novel mercury treatment technology with minimal generation of contaminated waste, thereby reducing the overall environmental impact of the process.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2013.10.067 | DOI Listing |
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January 2025
Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSIR-CSMCRI), Bhavnagar, Gujarat, 364002, India.
Fluorine-free organic framework polyelectrolyte membranes showing near frictionless ionic conductivities are gaining cognitive insights. However, the co-precipitation of COFs in the membranes often brings trade-offs to commission long-life electrochemical energy storage solutions. Herein, a durable and ionically miscible dual-ion exchange membrane based on triazine organic framework (TOF) is designed for alkaline redox flow batteries (RFB).
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January 2025
Institute of Flexible Electronics (IFE), Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China.
Anion exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) are one of the ideal energy conversion devices. However, platinum (Pt), as the benchmark catalyst for the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR) of AEMFCs anodes, still faces issues of insufficient performance and susceptibility to CO poisoning. Here, we report the Joule heating-assisted synthesis of a small sized RuPt single-atom alloy catalyst loaded on nitrogen-doped carbon modified with single W atoms (s-RuPt@W/NC), in which the near-range single Ru atoms on the RuPt nanoparticles and the long-range single W atoms on the support simultaneously modulate the electronic structure of the active Pt-site, enhancing alkaline HOR performance of s-RuPt@W/NC.
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January 2025
Institute of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Sciences, Qingdao University, Qingdao, China.
The development of acid-stable water oxidation electrocatalysts is crucial for high-performance energy conversion devices. Different from traditional nanostructuring, here we employ an innovative microwave-mediated electron-phonon coupling technique to assemble specific Ru atomic patterns (instead of random Ru-particle depositions) on MnCrO surfaces (Ru-MnCrO) in RuCl solution because hydrated Ru-ion complexes can be uniformly activated to replace some Mn sites at nearby Cr-dopants through microwave-triggered energy coherent superposition with molecular rotations and collisions. This selective rearrangement in Ru-MnCrO with particular spin-differentiated polarizations can induce localized spin domain inversion from reversed to parallel direction, which makes Ru-MnCrO demonstrate a high current density of 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdv Sci (Weinh)
January 2025
Department of Chemistry, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
Electrochemical CO reduction in acidic media attracts extensive research attention due to its potential in increasing carbon efficiency. In most reports, alkali cations are introduced to suppress hydrogen evolution and to promote CO reduction. However, the mass transport of alkali cations through cation exchange membrane induces the change of electrolyte compositions.
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January 2025
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, P. R. China.
High temperature-proton exchange membrane fuel cells (HT-PEMFC) call for ionomers with low humidity dependence and elevated-temperature resistance. Traditional perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) ionomers encounter challenges in meeting these stringent requirements. Herein, this study reports a perfluoroimide multi-acid (PFMA) ionomer with dual active centers achieved through the incorporation of sulfonimide and phosphonic acid groups into the side chain.
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