Novel Solid-State Processing of Polymer/Carbon Nanotube Composites for Effective Removal of Contaminants from Water

Many areas of the world today lack access to clean water and in the upcoming years we face growing water stresses due to an increase of micropollutants in water sources. Recent studies demonstrate the ability of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to more effectively remove a wide-range of contaminants from water compared to the activated carbon. However, “bundling”, or clumping, of individual tubes observed in commercial CNTs hinders their contaminant removal efficiency due to limited adsorption-ready sites. By processing the carbon nanotubes with a polymer matrix using solid-state shear pulverization, effective debundling of CNTs can occur, resulting in composite materials that have an enhanced ability to remove target contaminants. While maintaining the same ratio of mass of carbon nanotubes to volume of contaminated solution, the removal efficiency of the polymer-carbon nanotube and the unprocessed carbon nanotubes were compared. The debundling effect was characterized by BET surface area measurement, while the contaminant removal was quantitatively monitored using UV-Vis spectroscopy.