According to the World Health Organization (WHO) an estimated 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.
The new material described as Metal Organic Framework (MOF) Polydopamine Composite. It’s an organic chemical metal structure known to pull things like water and gases from air. However, this also proves to be a promising material to remove heavy metals selectively from water.
Drinking water contamination with heavy metals, particularly lead, is a persistent problem worldwide and existing purification methods often cannot address this problem quickly and economically.
However researchers a cheap, water stable metal–organic framework/polymer composite, Fe-BTC/PDA, that exhibits rapid, selective removal of large quantities of heavy metals, such as Pb2+ [lead] and Hg2+ [mercury], from real world water samples.
The PDA, pinned on the internal MOF surface could remove more than 99.8% of these ions from a 1 ppm solution, yielding drinkable levels in seconds. Further, the composite properties are well-maintained in river and seawater samples.
This metal-polymer sponge-like material can sweep up lead and mercury pollutants from any source of water with extreme efficiency, and can even be cleaned and reused over and over again.
Heavy metals such as lead and mercury are known to damage the nervous system, and the body is not able to excrete it, so concentrations add up. Solutions like these new materials are crucial to clean up the mess.