Reducing costs for water decontamination
University of Birmingham Enterprise has a patent application on the method and material to recover rare-earth elements and heavy metals from waste.
A next-generation metal organic framework (MOF) for capturing heavy metals from wastewater, have shown it is cheaper and more resource-efficient to produce than the similar MOF processed conventionally.
The material has been tested on water samples, where it is reported to display efficiency in removing lead from chemically complex solutions, with low copper leaching.
It comes in the form of pellets rather than fine powder, reportedly enabling easier handling in real-world situations.
Their paper details a freeze-drying technique that increases isolated yield more than threefold and reduces estimated electricity demand per gram by around 74% - lowering estimated lab-scale production cost from around $19/g to just over $5/g compared with conventional processing.
The research demonstrates freeze-dried MOF has a high capacity to rapidly remove lead from solution, with over 90% removal in the first hour, with high removal maintained across four consecutive treatment batches.
It also showed that the material retained its principal structural features after seven days of exposure to air, freshwater-like conditions and artificial seawater.
The researchers are now looking for industrial partners in mining, e-waste, or water treatment who are interested in licensing the technology for a specific application or co-developing a pilot-scale trial in a real-world setting.
