Application of carbon nanotube technology for removal of contaminants in drinking water: a review.

By V. Upadhyayula, Shuguang Deng, M. Mitchell, Geoffrey B. Smith. Science of the Total Environment, 2009

653 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Carbon nanotube (CNT) adsorption technology has the potential to support point of use (POU) based treatment approach for removal of bacterial pathogens, natural organic matter (NOM), and cyanobacterial toxins from water systems. Unlike many microporous adsorbents, CNTs possess fibrous shape with high aspect ratio, large accessible external surface area, and well developed mesopores, all contribute to the superior removal capacities of these macromolecular biomolecules and microorganisms. This article provides a comprehensive review on application of CNTs as adsorbent media to concentrate and remove pathogens, NOM, and cyanobacterial (microcystin derivatives) toxins from water systems. The paper also surveys on consideration of CNT based adsorption filters for removal of these contaminants from cost, operational and safety standpoint. Based on the studied literature it appears that POU based CNT technology looks promising, that can possibly avoid difficulties of treating biological contaminants in conventional water treatment plants, and thereby remove the burden of maintaining the biostability of treated water in the distribution systems.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/33dc7335ea81c2e0841173a9e07a661954b09a2a

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Citations in the corpus

Carbon nanotubes for desalination: Performance evaluation and current hurdles (2013, background): “In fact, it has been verified that CNT adsorption technology has the potential to support point-of-use water treatment approach for effective removal of pathogens, natural organic matter and cyanobacterial toxins from the water system [32].”
Use of iron oxide nanomaterials in wastewater treatment: a review. (2012, background): “Several kinds of nanomaterials, such as carbon-based NMs (Mauter and Elimelech, 2008; Upadhyayula et al., 2009) and TiO2 NMs (Khan et al.”
Ultralight carbon aerogel from nanocellulose as a highly selective oil absorption material (2015, background): “It has been reported that graphene aerogel, carbon nanotube aerogel, carbon fiber aerogel, and carbon microbelts aerogel are capable of separating water and oil (Gui et al. 2011; Hu et al. 2013; Li et al. 2010, 2014; Upadhyayula et al. 2009; Wu et al. 2013).”
Optimizing the removal of organophosphorus pesticide malathion from water using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (2017, background): “In 2009, a review was conducted on the use of carbon nanotubes as a substrate adsorbent to remove pathogens, organic materials and cyanobacterial toxins caused by microcytic forms from the aquatic environment [20].”
Carbon nanotube membranes for water purification: A bright future in water desalination (2014, background): “Finally, high operating costs limit their field-level applications [85].”
A Review of Removal of Pollutants from Water/Wastewater Using Different Types of Nanomaterials (2014, background): “Researchers have attributed the antimicrobial effects of CNTs to their unique physical, cytotoxic, and surface functionalizing properties [229], their fibrous shape [230, 231], the size and length of the tubes, and number of layers (single- or multiwalled) [155, 232].”
Synergistic and competitive adsorption of organic dyes on multiwalled carbon nanotubes (2012, background): “Due to their large specific surface area, small pore size, hollow and layered structures, carbon nanotubes have been proven to possess a great potential as superior adsorbents for removing many kinds of organic and inorganic contaminants from aqueous solution [15].”
Enhancing oil removal from water using ferric oxide nanoparticles doped carbon nanotubes adsorbents (2016, neutral): “5 mechanical, and thermal stability [15, 16].”