Research Overview
Microplastics as Vectors for Inorganic Contaminants
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Plastics are among the most widespread and persistent pollutants globally, necessitating a detailed process-level understanding of their behavior in the environment. Of these plastics, microplastics (MPs) (100 nm - 5 mm) are of particular concern due to their small size increasing their potential to be ingested by organisms, and their high surface area to volume ratio greatly increasing their sorption capacities for contaminants, resulting in biomagnification of pollutants.
As plastics enter into the environment, they are exposed to a wide variety of environmental systems conditions (e.g. exposure to sunlight, terrestrial vs aqueous conditions, growth of biofilms). As plastics chemically degrade, their surface chemistry changes significantly, influencing their ability to adsorb and accumulate inorganic contaminants such as toxic metals. This project seeks to understand the changes in plastic surface chemistry that occur upon degradation and how environmental systems conditions influence these degradation pathways with the overall goal of understanding the capacity of microplastics to serve as vectors for inorganic contaminants as they weather.
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Design of Sustainable and Selective Adsorbent Materials
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This research project focuses on development of novel adsorptive materials using sustainable biomaterials such as shrimp shells (chitosan), that are inherently more efficient, cost effective, and sustainable than traditional adsorbents.
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We utilize chitosan, a natural waste product of the shellfish industry, repurposed
to now remove inorganic ions of concern from drinking water or of economic interest from waste streams, selectively. By making the adsorbents selective, removal effectiveness of the target contaminant is increased, the need for a costly separation process at end of life is removed, and the recyclability of the removed contaminants as fresh feedstock is improved.
