Good news: our paper titled Steroid hormone micropollutant removal from membrane bioreactor effluents using single-walled carbon nanotube composite nanofiber membranes has been accepted for publication in Chemical Engineering Journal (2025 IF of 13.5).
What the paper is about
This paper sheds some light on the challenges of applying new technologies—particulaly adsorption by carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in a composite membrane—in removing micropollutants from water.
CNTs were chosen as model adsorbents with a high amount of external surface. This is important because micropollutants need to attach to the surface very fast—otherwise they will be carried away in the flow and end up in the treated water. Our paper shows that single-walled CNT composite membranes can remove up to 96% of steroid hormone micropollutants.
Frankly speaking, CNTs are toxic to humans and will not be accepted in water treatment. Even as a model adsorbents, CNTs are limited in certain other ways for treating real water. First, organic matter in real water occupies the CNT surface and reduces the removal of micropollutants. Second, the composite membrane is selective towards our target micropollutants, but fails to remove other micropollutants in a complex water matrix.
Our findings cement the point that dynamic adsorption by CNTs or some similar nanomaterials is nowhere near replacing established technologies such as ozonation and powdered activated carbon adsorption. Various aspects of these “big names” have been studied for decades. In our field, novel materials or processes are frequently hyped up as the next “game changers”, but a good technological evalutation needs to see beyond this hype.