Tuesday, July 15, 2025
LBNN
  • Business
  • Markets
  • Politics
  • Crypto
  • Finance
  • Energy
  • Technology
  • Taxes
  • Creator Economy
  • Wealth Management
  • Documentaries
No Result
View All Result
LBNN

Cleaning water with ‘smart rust’ and magnets

Simon Osuji by Simon Osuji
August 16, 2023
in Technology
0
Cleaning water with ‘smart rust’ and magnets
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Cleaning water with 'smart rust' and magnets (video)
In this illustration, a “smart rust” nanoparticle attracts and traps estrogen molecules, which are represented by the floating objects. Credit: Dr. Dustin Vivod and Prof. Dr. Dirk Zahn, Computer Chemistry Center (CCC), Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Pouring flecks of rust into water usually makes it dirtier. But researchers have developed special iron oxide nanoparticles they call “smart rust” that actually makes it cleaner. Smart rust can attract many substances, including oil, nano- and microplastics, as well as the herbicide glyphosate, depending on the particles’ coating. And because the nanoparticles are magnetic, they can easily be removed from water with a magnet along with the pollutants. Now, the team is reporting that they’ve tweaked the particles to trap estrogen hormones that are potentially harmful to aquatic life.

Related posts

Cancer drugmaker LaNova to sell to China’s Sino Biopharm

Cancer drugmaker LaNova to sell to China’s Sino Biopharm

July 15, 2025
AMCEN 20: Greenpeace urges ministers to deliver bold action on plastics, climate justice, forest protection – EnviroNews

AMCEN 20: Greenpeace urges ministers to deliver bold action on plastics, climate justice, forest protection – EnviroNews

July 15, 2025

The researchers will present their results today at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

“Our ‘smart rust’ is cheap, nontoxic and recyclable,” says Marcus Halik, Ph.D., the project’s principal investigator. “And we have demonstrated its use for all kinds of contaminants, showing the potential for this technique to improve water treatment dramatically.”

For many years, Halik’s research team has been investigating environmentally friendly ways to remove pollutants from water. The base materials they use are iron oxide nanoparticles in a superparamagnetic form, which means they are drawn to magnets, but not to each other, so the particles don’t clump.






Credit: American Chemical Society

To make them “smart,” the team developed a technique to attach phosphonic acid molecules onto the nanometer-sized spheres. “After we add a layer of the molecules to the iron oxide cores, they look like hairs sticking out of these particles’ surfaces,” says Halik, who is based at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Then, by changing what is bound to the other side of the phosphonic acids, the researchers can tune the properties of the nanoparticles’ surfaces to strongly adsorb different types of pollutants.

Early versions of smart rust trapped crude oil from water collected from the Mediterranean Sea and glyphosate from pond water collected near the researchers’ university. Additionally, the team demonstrated that smart rust could remove nano- and microplastics added to lab and river water samples.

So far, the team has targeted pollutants present in mostly large amounts. Lukas Müller, a graduate student who’s presenting new work at the meeting, wanted to know if he could modify the rust nanoparticles to attract trace contaminants, such as hormones. When some of the human body’s hormones are excreted, they are flushed into wastewater and eventually enter waterways. Natural and synthetic estrogens are one such group of hormones, and the main sources of these contaminants include waste from humans and livestock. The amounts of estrogens are very low in the environment, says Müller, so they are difficult to remove. Yet even these levels have been shown to affect the metabolism and reproduction of some plants and animals, although the effects of low levels of these compounds on humans over long periods aren’t fully known.

“I started with the most common estrogen, estradiol, and then four other derivatives that share similar molecular structures,” says Müller. Estrogen molecules have a bulky steroid body and parts with slight negative charges. To exploit both characteristics, he coated iron oxide nanoparticles with two sets of compounds: one that was long and another that was positively charged. The two molecules organized themselves on the nanoparticles’ surface, and the researchers hypothesize that together, they build many billions of “pockets” that draw in the estradiol and trap it in place.

Because these pockets are invisible to the naked eye, Müller has been using high-tech instruments to verify that these estrogen-trapping pockets exist. Preliminary results show efficient extraction of the hormones from lab samples, but the researchers need to look at additional experiments from solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and small-angle neutron scattering to verify the pocket hypothesis. “We are trying to use different puzzle pieces to understand how the molecules actually assemble on the nanoparticles’ surface,” explains Müller.

In the future, the team will test these particles on real-world water samples and determine the number of times that they can be reused. Because each nanoparticle has a high surface area with lots of pockets, the researchers say that they should be able to remove estrogens from multiple water samples, thereby reducing the cost per cleaning. “By repeatedly recycling these particles, the material impact from this water treatment method could become very small,” concludes Halik.

More information:
Smart rust to clean water from hormones, ACS Fall 2023

Provided by
American Chemical Society

Citation:
Cleaning water with ‘smart rust’ and magnets (2023, August 16)
retrieved 16 August 2023
from https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smart-rust-magnets.html

This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

Source link

Previous Post

Carolina Panthers – New York Giants: Game time, TV Schedule and where to watch the Week 2 NFL Preseason Game

Next Post

Getting Through Back-To-School With A Middle Schooler

Next Post
Getting Through Back-To-School With A Middle Schooler

Getting Through Back-To-School With A Middle Schooler

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

RECOMMENDED NEWS

EU border agency reports decline in illegal migrants from Africa, other regions in 2024

EU border agency reports decline in illegal migrants from Africa, other regions in 2024

6 months ago
Pioneering efficient traffic control and sustainable energy solutions

Pioneering efficient traffic control and sustainable energy solutions

10 months ago
AroundtheClock Communications Group appoints Rizk Naifeh as Chairman

AroundtheClock Communications Group appoints Rizk Naifeh as Chairman

6 months ago
China’s Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies

China’s Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies

1 year ago

POPULAR NEWS

  • Ghana to build three oil refineries, five petrochemical plants in energy sector overhaul

    Ghana to build three oil refineries, five petrochemical plants in energy sector overhaul

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • When Will SHIB Reach $1? Here’s What ChatGPT Says

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The world’s top 10 most valuable car brands in 2025

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Top 10 African countries with the highest GDP per capita in 2025

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Global ranking of Top 5 smartphone brands in Q3, 2024

    0 shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Privacy Policy
  • Contact

© 2023 LBNN - All rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Business
  • Politics
  • Markets
  • Crypto
  • Economics
    • Manufacturing
    • Real Estate
    • Infrastructure
  • Finance
  • Energy
  • Creator Economy
  • Wealth Management
  • Taxes
  • Telecoms
  • Military & Defense
  • Careers
  • Technology
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Investigative journalism
  • Art & Culture
  • Documentaries
  • Quizzes
    • Enneagram quiz
  • Newsletters
    • LBNN Newsletter
    • Divergent Capitalist

© 2023 LBNN - All rights reserved.