Wet-Nanotechnology and Nanofluids: Nanoparticles and Water Quality

M. Kostic

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northern Illinois University

www.kostic.niu.edu/DRnanofluids

Water is ranked as second, after energy, among the Humanity’s Top Ten Strategic Problems in the next 50 years.  Demand for quality water is rising due to limited supplies of freshwater, extended droughts, population growth, and decline in water quality due to increasing groundwater and surface water pollution as well as increasing demands from a variety of competing industries. The coupled physical, chemical and biological processes that influence water quality in natural and industrial systems are complex and include clusters, macromolecules, nanoparticles and colloids. Functional nanoparticles can be designed and synthesized to act as both reaction and separation media for pollutants, or as carriers and delivery vehicles for chemical and/or bioactive compounds; thus providing unforeseen opportunities for development of more efficient and cost effective water purification processes and systems.

Many of the problems involving water quality could be resolved or minimized with advancement in nanoscale science and engineering, such as use of nanosorbents, nanocatalysts, bioactive nanoparticles, nanostructured catalytic membranes, and nanoparticle enhanced filtration, among other products.

Use of different innovative and functional nanoparticles in water purification media or embedded in membranes may effectively (and ultimately inexpensively) contribute to the purification of surface water, groundwater and industrial wastewater, contaminated by toxic metal ions, radionuclides, organic and inorganic solutes, bacteria and viruses. Many challenges but also opportunities exist with utilization of advanced nanomaterials and innovative technologies.