Micropollutants are present in water coming from various sources such as pesticides, pharmaceuticals and industrial additives. Until now, the fate of micropollutants in the water was not well known but these pollutants become a global environmental problem as information about them is increasing day by day in the manner of environmental and human health hazards. Because of the insufficiency of the existing treatment processes in the control of these pollutants, they have potential to reach groundwater or surface waters and in consequence of this, to reach the people through drinking water. Therefore, micropollutants are problem in today's water management. Zeolites are of great importance in technological applications thanks to their physical and chemical structures. Thermal behaviors, stability to acids, water retention and release, absorption and adsorption properties, ion exchange capacities and their surface areas are some of the important features. Despite these, many zeolites tested up to now did not exhibit high adsorption capacity toward the micropollutant removal from water. However, our preliminary investigation put forward that the chabazite zeolite has larger surface area than others, which indicates that the adsorption capacity could be higher and therefore could be used in water treatment. Chabazite, a natural zeolite, is an aluminum silicate mineral. Since the chabazite is one of the most abundant in natural zeolites, it is an economically important raw material among the zeolite group of minerals. Zeolites and also chabazite can be modified via numerous methods to enhance their treatment capability. These methods contain converting to cationic form, increasing the hydrophobicity, activation via acid or modification with surfactant. These methods could be applied to increase the adsorption capacity of chabazite zeolite. It is our foresight that chabazite zeolite would act as an efficient adsorbent to remove the micropollutants from water. Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to assess the micropollutant treatment efficacy of chabazite zeolite as either natural or modified adsorbent. To this purpose, adsorption tests will be performed with selected micropollutants of different structures such as organochlorine, organophosphorous, nitrogen based etc. Surface modifications will be followed via SEM, BET area, XRD, ICP-MS and micropollutant measurements will be performed using LC-MS/MS or GC-MS.
By: Ece Akay
Advisor: Prof. Dr. Filiz B. Dilek
Location: CZ-14
Time: 15.05.2019 at 15:40