Description
SON’s nanoscavengers address some of the biggest challenges of this century.
Water pollution: a global emergency
Heavy metal pollution of wastewater is a major environmental issue. The impact on ecosystems and human health needs to be taken very seriously.
Heavy metals (including lead, mercury, cadmium, and chromium) are often found in the wastewater from factories and towns or cities, despite the considerable efforts made to control such pollution.
There are numerous sources of heavy metal pollution, such as mining activities, the metalworking industry, and scrap electronics.
While various filtration and treatment systems have already been developed, they are not always enough. Nanomaterials are an innovative and hugely effective way of removing toxic metals from wastewater. It’s now possible to drastically reduce levels of toxic metal pollution in wastewater and ensure that future generations have clean water. But how?
Wastewater remediation and capturing critical metals
SON supplies nanoparticles that can capture critical metals in wastewater and then remove them: this environmental remediation technology is called DepolluSon©.
DepolluSon© is used to both detect and process water pollutants by means of multifunctional nanoparticles. We call these SON Nanoscavengers. Using these nanoscavengers allows you to capture metal ions present in wastewater for subsequent processing.
What are SON Nanoscavengers?
They are DTPA-functionalised iron oxide nanoparticles. Using the superparamagnetic properties of SPIOs, metal particles can be magnetically removed from water quite easily.
This technology not only enables environmental remediation but also means that costly critical metals can be reclaimed and recycled. It is also able to target and extract a specific metal.
