A tiny molecule could clean the world’s most polluted waters 

Our rivers and waterways are at increasing risk from a cocktail of harmful industrial chemicals, solvents and urban waste. These pollutants don’t just linger in the environment, they can seep into the food chain, posing a threat to both ecosystems and human health. Traditional wastewater treatment methods often struggle to get rid of these stubborn pollutants. 

Researchers at Khalifa University are developing more powerful ways to treat water contaminated by these persistent and toxic wastes. The work “represents a major step forward in clean water technologies, offering an efficient, scalable, and environmentally friendly solution for treating wastewater and protecting public health,” says Nagy Torad, a KU chemist who works on the project.   

“The work represents a major step forward in clean water technologies, offering an efficient, scalable, and environmentally friendly solution.” 

Nagy Torad 

The team looked at metal-free carbon-based catalysts—materials used to degrade organic molecules in wastewater. By adding nitrogen atoms, they discovered the catalysts created tiny, enclosed spaces. The design dramatically improved their performance and increased the amounts of contaminants they could remove.  

Still one mystery remained: they didn’t fully understand why the approach seemed to work effectively, or how to optimize these systems for more efficient pollution treatment. 

Their latest research revealed the answer, finding that the nitrogen and confined spaces boosted the production of singlet oxygen—a powerful chemical that acts like a targeted cleaning agent, selectively breaking down pollutants. “This innovative approach not only boosts pollutant removal efficiency but also sheds light on the underlying chemical processes that drive this performance,” Torad explains.  

Based on this discovery, the team built a new type of catalyst and tested it on water samples drawn from the Yangtze River in China—one of the most polluted waterways in the world.  

The results were incredible. The catalyst removed over 99% of the micropollutants. And tests showed it could achieve an impressive 99.4% removal efficiency of bisphenol A, an organic chemical commonly found in plastics and resins, frequently detected in water bodies near industrial and consumer activities and is associated with reproductive problems, metabolic disorders, and certain cancers. This is a huge improvement over similar existing catalysts, which only managed a 14.8% removal rate.  

“While these results are promising, further work is needed to advance the technology toward commercialization,” Torad says. The researchers are now investigating how to fine-tune the process, and studying how pollutants move through the catalyst at a microscopic level to make it even more efficient. 

Reference

Li, J., Lyu, W., Mi, X., Yu, J., Liu, Y.,  Torad, N., Ayad, M., Feng, J., and Liao, Y. Carbonized nitrogen-containing conjugated microporous polymers: Versatile platforms for high-performance carbon catalytic membranes and their angstrom-confined activation mechanism on peroxymonosulfate. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 491, 2025.