Industrial effluents are complex mixtures of metal and non-metal salts and the composition varies dramatically along the processing system used in producing the final saline effluent. Development of new metal removal and purification processes is an urgent topic and the key issue is the capacity and selectivity of materials used for metal removal and purification of these different solutions.
Project funding:
Academy of Finland
Duration of the project:
1.9.2018-28.22024
Description
Ion exchange and adsorption are well-established, safe and environmentally acceptable technologies for the removal of toxic metals and molecules from either dilute or concentrated aqueous solutions. The commercially available ion-exchange and adsorption materials suffer scarce selectivity towards the target ions. Ion imprinting technique allows the preparation of separation materials with extremely high selectivity. This technique combines the presence of a chelating groups which can specifically interact with the target ion with the formation of selective cavities which are physically and chemically complementary to the target ion.
Goals
The objective of this project is to find solutions for complex hydrometallurgical separation and environmental purification problems by developing new generation separation and purification materials for removal of hazardous metals as nickel, cobalt and copper using ion imprinting techniques.
Staff
Eveliina Repo
