Zeolite Cotton in Tube: A Simple Robust Household Water Treatment Filter for Heavy Metal Removal.

ABSTRACT: It is challenging to develop a low-cost household water treatment (HWT) that simultaneously deliver an effective and robust way for safe and reliable water supply. Here, we report a simple flow-through filter made by zeolite-cotton packing in a tube (ZCT) as low-cost HWT device to remove heavy metal ions from contaminated water. The zeolite-cotton is fabricated by an on-site template-free growth route that tightly binds mesoporous single-crystal chabazite zeolite onto the surface of cotton fibers. As a result, the ZCT set-up with optimized diameter achieves both high adsorption efficiency, proper flow rate, reliable supply and strong stability at the same time. After flowed through the set up packed with 10?g of zeolite-cotton, 65?mL 1000 ppm Cu2+ solution was purified down to its safety limit (<1 ppm). Notably, their efficiency remains unaltered when filtering several ions simultaneously. In a simulated purification process, 8?L of water contaminated by Cu2+, Cd2+ and Pb2+ could be transformed into drinking water and it enables the removal of heavy metals to concentrations of below 5 ppb (?g L-1). We also show that the ZCT can be used for disinfection by introducing Ag-exchanged zeolite-cotton without contaminating the water with Ag ions (<0.05 ppm).

SUBMITTER: Chen X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7070062 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature