Water remediation

Water pollution is a major problem worldwide. Emerging contaminants, including pharmaceuticals and personal care products, heavy metals, pesticides, and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are associated with serious health, environmental and socio-economic problems. Implementing remediation techniques is essential to restore polluted water sources and ensure a sustainable, clean water supply for the future. Over the past decades, numerous water treatment methods have been developed for remediation purposes, with adsorption emerging as a particularly promising technology due to its cost-effectiveness, versatility, reusability, low energy requirements and environmental sustainability. In addition to material development itself, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming data-driven design and paving the way for a new era of advanced, highly efficient adsorbents.

The aim of this project is to bridge the gap between the experimental development of adsorbents for water treatment and data-driven modeling approaches with the goal of improving the adsorption capacity of the materials. The experimental part of the project is supported by the Materials Physics Center, Polymers and Soft Matter Group.