New Polymer Material for Selective Capture of Heavy Metal Ions in Water

TapTechNews August 1st news, Kyoto University released a communiqué stating that it, in collaboration with a German research team, has developed a new type of polymer material that can selectively capture a large amount of toxic heavy metal ions in water to purify the water environment.

According to the introduction, its inspiration comes from proteins that protect plants and the water environment by selectively capturing toxic heavy metal ions in plants. Related achievements have been published in Nature Communications (TapTechNews attaches DOI: s41467-024-49869-8).

Currently, commonly used water purification materials mainly rely on small pores in the materials to adsorb ions or purify water through the exchange of ions in the materials with ions in the water. But these water purification materials usually have difficulty in taking into account both the removal efficiency and selectively removing the target ions.

Some animals and plants cleverly use proteins that can selectively bind to specific heavy metal ions to protect themselves from the poisoning of heavy metal ions. For example, plants will use phytochelatins in cells to selectively capture heavy metal ions such as cadmium contained in groundwater absorbed by the roots and seal them into vacuoles.

The researchers were inspired by this and designed a synthetic polymer that has the same functional groups used when phytochelatins bind to heavy metal ions. The research team verified that its binding ability to cadmium ions exceeds that of phytochelatins.

The research team also achieved ultra-high integration of this polymer material, greatly enhancing the efficiency of ion capture. In the purification experiment of industrial wastewater, 3 milliliters of this ultra-highly integrated material removed cadmium ions in 300 milliliters of wastewater to meet the drinking water standards set by the World Health Organization within one hour.