Nanomaterials for Air Remediation

Abdeltif Amrane, Aymen Amine Assadi, Phuong Nguyen-Tri, Tuan Anh Nguyen, Sami Rtimi

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780128188217
• eBook ISBN: 9780128188224
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Materials Science
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Nanomaterials for Air Remediation provides a comprehensive description of basic knowledge and current research progress in the field of air treatment using nanomaterials. The book explores how nanomaterials are used in various air remediation techniques, including advanced oxidation processes, biological processes, and filtration. It also covers their combined use as nanocatalysts, nanoantibiotics, nanoadsorbents, nanocontainers, nanofiltrations and nanosensors. Major challenges to using nanomaterials for improving air quality on a mass scale, both practical and regulatory, are also presented. This is an important resource for materials scientists and environmental engineers who are looking to understand how nanotechnology is used to enhance air quality.- Includes coverage of a wide range of nanomaterials, from biochemical to chemical materials, and nanomaterials supported photocatalysts- Discusses how the properties of nanomaterials are being used to make more efficient air purification systems and products- Assesses the practical and regulatory challenges of using different types of nanomaterials for air remediation

Part I

Environmental Impacts of Nanomaterials in Air Treatment

Outline

• Chapter 1 Nanomaterial for air remediation: an introduction
• Chapter 2 Air quality monitoring using nanosensors
• Chapter 3 Smart nanosensors and methods for detection of nanoparticles and their potential toxicity in air
• Chapter 4 Nanobiosensors for virus detection in the environment
• Chapter 5 Toxicity/risk assessment of nanomaterials when used in air/gas treatment
• Chapter 6 Nanosensors for gas sensing applications

Chapter 1

Nanomaterial for air remediation: an introduction

Phuong Nguyen-Tri¹, Tuan Anh Nguyen² and Thien Vuong Nguyen², ¹Department of Chemistry, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada, ²Institute for Tropical Technology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam

Abstract

The environmental safety for air is challenging because of the industrialization, urbanization, increasing population and climate change. In this introduction chapter, we introduce the latest air remediation technologies which can be used for remove contaminants in the atmosphere including physical, chemical and biological approaches. The advantages, drawbacks of each method and future trends are reviewed to provide the solid backgrounds on the related topic for scientists, professionals, engineers and students.

Keywords

Nanomaterials; Air remediation; Nano-catalysts; Nanofiltrations nanosensors; Photocatalytics

Nowadays, there is significant demands for sustainable and clean environment in the developed countries, due to the industrialization, urbanization, increasing population, and climate change. The synergy between modern engineering science and nanotechnology has resulted in rapid development of air remediation. Nanomaterials have attracted tremendous research interest because of their unique properties, mainly arising from the quantum confinement effect and extremely large surface-to-volume ratios. Nanomaterials could offer the new routes to address challenging and pressing issues facing environmental pollution.

Regarding the presence of nanoparticles in air, their potential health and environmental risks have been significantly concerned. The nanoparticles may release into various environmental compartments, such as air, soil, water systems. Wang et al. [1] reported different processes by the release of nanoparticles into environment. Recently, nanomaterials based sensors (nanosensors) can offer many advantages over their micro counterparts, such as lower power consumption, high sensitivity, lower concentration of analysts, smaller interaction distance between object and sensor. Nanosensors can be used to understand the fate, toxicity and detection of nanoparticles in the environment [2]. Various nano-sensors have been used to detect and monitor toxins, heavy metals, and organic pollutants in air, water, and soil [3,4]. For the detection of nanoparticles (metal/metal oxide nanoparticles, quantum dots), various sensors can be used [5–14]. The route through which nanoparticles enter to the body and induce their toxic effects is an important key for their nanotoxicology. The major routes for exposure of nanoparticles include (i) Inhalation of airborne nanoparticles [15–24]; (ii) Ingestion [25–28], and Skin [29–32].

Various methods can be used to control air pollution, such as indoor simple ventilation [33], particle removal filter [34], adsorption method [35], electronic air cleaner [36], biofiltration [37] and oxidation process [38]. Among the techniques, oxidation process method offers the advantages over other methods, due to its most reliable, cost-effective, and safe air remediation. In contrast to other methods, the oxidation process can directly convert the VOC (volatile organic compounds) into harmless compounds without any additional step [39]. Using nanocatalysts (nanomaterial based catalysts) in catalytic oxidation of VOCs is a promising method, by saving material (lesser catalyst) and energy cost (lesser heat required). These nanocatalysts can be categorized into three major groups: noble metals [40–59], non-noble metal oxides [60–68], and mixture of non-noble metal oxides [69–79].

Membrane technologies have been developed significantly due to of their potential in purifying air at very high-quality purity and lowering energy inputs [80,81]. This is particularly useful in concerning industry perspectives for increasing cost efficiency [82]. There is a broad scope of membrane technologies, which can be classified according to their separation principles and the respective properties of the selected membrane. For membrane filtration systems, various forms including the reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and gas separation [83–87]. Polymeric membranes can be fabricated in many pathways such as sintering and track-etching. Liang et al. focused selectively on electrospinning for producing the electrospun nanofibrous membranes (ENMs) [88]. These membranes are effectively used in numerous applications in healthcare, bionanotechnology as well as energy and environmental applications [88]. In addition, the functional nanomaterials can be also incorporated into the ENMs.

It was reported in literature that air pollution control can be performed by various technologies, such as physical-chemical and biological methods. The conventional technologies (thermal/catalytic oxidation, plasma/photocatalytic, condensation, absorption and adsorption processes) required the high energy consumption, with high temperature and/or pressure for their proper operation [89]. On the contrary, biological methods could be operated at the ambient temperature and pressure (i.e. 10–40 °C). Thus, biotechnologies offer more cost-efficient and simpler to operate, as compared to both physical and chemical technologies [90]. In the biotechnologies, pollutants (such as the volatile organic and inorganic compounds) can be metabolized by the activity of microbial communities. In the most case, microbial metabolism yields innocuous compounds such as CO₂, H₂O, sulfate, nitrate and biomass in most cases [90,91]. Since the biological processes rely on the activity of living cells, they might result a poor performance when dealing with toxic air pollutants (or with poorly water-soluble gases). Recently, the innovative biological technologies based on the immobilization of microbial cells on bedding nanomaterials have been developed. Estrada and Quijano emphasized the immobilization of microorganisms in bioactive coatings and silicone oil for developing a new generation of air pollution control technologies, including the fundamentals and practical applications.

On the other hand, the intergrated (combined) methods can be used to control air pollution, such as (i) combined cold plasma treatment and photocatalytic nanomaterials [92], (ii) biological and physicochemical combination processes, (iii) Biological treatment followed by physical methods (ozonation, photolysis).

Nanomaterials for Air Remediation aims to explore how nanomaterials are used in air remediations, through various processes such as the advanced oxidation processes (AOP), biological process, filtration and their combinations, by acting as the nano-catalysts, nano-antibiotics, nano-adsorbents, nanocontainers, nanofiltrations and nano-sensors.

The first part of this book foc...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• List of contributors
• Part I: Environmental Impacts of Nanomaterials in Air Treatment
• Part II: Nanomaterials in Advanced Oxidation Processes
• Part III: Biotechnological Process
• Part IV: Nanomaterials Based Absorbents
• Part V: Nanomaterials in Filtration Process
• Part VI: Nanomaterials in Integrated Methods
• Index