Bio-composite material tackles emerging water contaminants

Paracetamol, a widely used painkiller, often finds its way into wastewater where it’s hard to remove or treat using conventional means, and it ends up in rivers and streams. In recent years, many have voiced concern about such pollution from drugs and other chemicals, and warned that it could have toxic effects on human and aquatic life.

“The novel properties of the solid support make the enzyme work better than it normally would.”

Syed Salman Ashraf

Research at Khalifa University offers a possible solution. Working with colleagues in Slovenia, Spain, and France, KU researchers have developed a new water treatment system that can effectively tackle this class of emerging pollutants using a bio-composite material that combines a porous organic polymer with enzymes to break down various polluting and harmful molecules.^[1] In laboratory tests, when contaminated water passes through a column filled with this material, pollutants are removed with remarkable efficacy.

“The enzyme bio-composite acts on the pollutants in the water and breaks them down as the water passes through the column,” says Syed Salman Ashraf, Chair of Biological Sciences at KU, explaining that the material fixes a high density of enzymes in place.

“The novel properties of the solid support make the enzymes work better than they normally would. So, it appears to be working better than other conventional approaches,” Ashraf adds.

A fast and efficient solution

In a study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, the team showed how the system can degrade more than 99% of seven different pollutants within an hour. In addition to paracetamol, chemicals successfully removed from the water include mercaptobenzothiazole, a highly allergenic chemical found in rubber, and salicylic acid, a common topical skin treatment.

Dinesh Shetty, assistant professor of chemistry at KU, highlights the ability of the new bio-composite material to remove and degrade various types of pollutants from different sources of contaminated water, including those from a specific industrial effluent rich in a specific pollutant. It could even be used on general wastewater treatment plant effluent “that may still have traces of physiologically active emerging pollutants,” Shetty says.

To take this innovation from the laboratory to practical implementation, the team needs to demonstrate scalability and cost-effectiveness. “If provided sufficient funding, we could have a ten to hundred-liter water treatment system ready within two to three years,” Shetty says. “And eventually a one-thousand-liter system ready in another two to three years.”

Reference

1. Elmerhi N., Al-Maqdi K., Athamneh K., Mohammed AK, Skorjanc T., Gándara F., Raya J., Pascal S., Siri O, Trabolsi A., Shah I., Shetty D. and Ashraf S.S., Enzyme-immobilized hierarchically porous covalent organic framework biocomposite for catalytic degradation of broad-range emerging pollutants in water. J Hazard Mater. (2023 Oct 5;459:132261. | Article