Revolutionary purification techniques address impending global water crisis:-
A worldwide water crisis is imminent and will severely stress much of the world by 2025 unless new purification techniques can adequately and economically treat all sources of water. That's the prognosis of water-treatment expert Mark Shannon, director of the Center of Advanced Materials for Purification of Water with Systems at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Current processes to purify water require a lot of chemicals and a lot of energy, making treatment too costly or unavailable for much of the developed and developing world," Shannon said. "The difficulties in treating water are only expected to worsen as resources become more constrained."

Shannon's research center, with funding from the National Science Foundation, is developing sensors with specially designed and synthesized DNA to detect trace amounts of lead, mercury, arsenic and other contaminants. The sensors can be produced in the form of sophisticated testing instruments suitable for use by metropolitan water districts or in the form of test strips similar to those used in home pregnancy tests for households and other limited water users.

Shannon's colleagues also have synthesized chemically activated fibers and granules of carbon for removal of heavy metals and pesticides, like atrazine, in the presence of natural organic matter that interferes with many existing sensors. Water contaminated with pesticides is a critical problem for water in the Midwestern United States.

More than 1 billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and, in developing countries, more than 2 million people a year die from water-related problems, with the numbers growing. Because of declining snowpack storage and the loss of glaciers that feed rivers year-round, major river systems throughout the world will experience periodic water shortages. Aquifers are suffering from declining water levels, saltwater intrusion and inadequately replenished fresh groundwater; in some areas, demand for potable water exceeds available resources. This worldwide water crisis is made worse by deteriorating infrastructure, growing population, contamination and high demand for water in energy-generating processes.

Despite seemingly abundant water supplies, clean water shortages will have a critical impact on the people of the U.S., with problems across the nation. Expected population growth, contamination of fresh water from agriculture and industry, and the traditionally low cost of water in the U.S.--coupled with the perceived risks of investing in new and unproven technologies--are all preventing the commercialization of innovative technologies. As clean water sources decrease, the U.S. will need a new strategy for detecting and removing contaminants.

The center's research efforts are now able to detect specific contaminants in the parts per trillion range, where only parts per million was previously possible. The ability to detect toxic compounds at these levels will allow research to be conducted on what the health impacts are of certain contaminants at these previously unattainable lower levels.

"Low cost purification methods are in demand," said NSF Program Manager Rosemarie Wesson. "The fact that the Shannon team has developed methods to cost effectively detect and remove pesticides and heavy metals from water is intriguing. This work has not only expanded the knowledge base in the area of adsorption and sensor techniques, but the impact on society around the globe is just as exciting."

The technologies also allow for real-time detection and reduction of contaminants. Currently, water samples are taken and sent to a lab for analysis, which can lead to a two-week delay before action can take place. In the current era, where secure water sources is an integral part of national security, having real-time instantaneous contaminant detection and online catalytic reduction systems could save lives, and increase end-user health. Real-time detection can also enable select contaminant treatment, which has the potential for reducing operational costs.
The U.S. and the world are facing the very real dangers of depleted aquifers, inadequate surface water supplies, and contamination from a variety of sources including agricultural runoff, industrial discharges, acid rain, and ground-water pollutants. Waterborne pathogens are also a growing threat for water supplies. These dangers are expected to increase as populations continue to grow. Numerous technologies are being implemented to purify water, but current membrane and adsorbent materials used in water purification are not sufficient to solve all contamination problems and meet increasingly stringent new standards being proposed to protect health.

The best state-of-the-art materials have well-known shortcomings that are due to shortfalls in the current understanding of the underlying science. Indeed, to develop the revolutionary new materials and systems for safe and economical water-purification technology needed to counter the impending water crisis requires a coordinated, intensive, multi-year effort of scientists and engineers. The vision of this Center is to forge multi-disciplinary groups of researchers, educators, and practitioners into a cohesive team with the overarching goal of developing new functional materials and systems to purify water for the peoples of the United States and the world.

This Science and Technology Center (STC) has several distinguishing features. First and foremost, it provides coordinated participation of researchers in the following areas: water quality at Stanford and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), material science at UIUC, basic physical science (chemistry and physics) at the University of California at Berkeley, Clark Atlanta University, Stanford, and UIUC, and system-level experts at Stanford and UIUC. Furthermore, the Center facilitates the technology transfer and feedback from practitioners in water treatment through linkages with the UIUC Waste Management Research Center, and the Orange County (CA)Water District, as well as other water-quality organizations.

Another distinguishing feature of the STC is its establishment of a collaborative laboratory (collaboratory) for its education, research, and outreach functions, to ensure the integration of the activities. In this multi-disciplinary collaboratory, chemists, material scientists, physicists, biologists, and engineers will work together with library and information-science experts in the Center to disseminate information and research results showing how to synthesize, characterize, and understand new material systems designed to separate compounds from water and/or transform them.

The premise of this STC is that advanced, selective and efficient water-treatment technologies will be based on membrane filters, adsorbents, and catalytic surfaces. Rational development of the required materials requires a firm grasp of the basic science of the aqueous interface. The key issue is to observe and to manipulate on the Angstrom to nanometer scale interactions between the aqueous solution and the solid substrate. The goals of the STC are: (i) to advance the basic understanding of these interactions; (ii) to use the results to radically improve membranes, filters, adsorbents, and ion-exchange materials through the synthesis of new materials that are able to separate selectively and/or transform compounds in water; (iii) to integrate these new materials into viable water purification systems; and (iv) to integrate the human and knowledge infrastructure with the research mission to implement effectively the science and technology.

To accomplish these goals, the STC is organized in four core teams: (i) Interfacial Processes and Molecular Characterization, (ii) Materials Synthesis and Development, (iii) System Analysis and Integration, and (iv) Collaboratory Education and Outreach.

The Center supports education and outreach activities for: (i) K-12 teachers and students to learn why clean water is important and how fundamental research and sound engineering can help make water cleaner; (ii) underrepresented groups in science and engineering, encouraging members of such groups to pursue careers related to water purification, material science, and engineering; (iii) citizen groups, water industry professionals, and local governments to help formulate, debate, and implement policies related to water quality control; and (iv) the general public to understand the need for basic research on water purification. All constituent groups are supported by a web-based collaborative laboratory to support knowledge dissemination, mentoring, learning, public debate, and discussion. The main tool used for the collaboratory is the INQUIRY-based learning and research environment developed in the UIUC School of Library and Information Science, which allows two-way research and education to be conducted between the partners and all the participants and constituent groups of the Center.

The STC seeks aggressively to increase diversity in education, research, and outreach.

Diversity is essential for increasing the numbers of under-represented groups in science and technology. The STC can make the greatest impact if the knowledge and technologies developed are implemented throughout the U.S. and the world by diverse educators and researchers. To achieve this impact, the proposed STC has

partnered with the Environmental Technology Consortium (ETC) of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other minority institutions (MIs) to increase minority participation. In addition, CAU is an active water-treatment research partner, which supports the training of a diverse group of students in water purification research.

Due to the critical need for improved materials and processes for water purification, this

STC has an immediate opportunity to transfer the knowledge gained from basic science and engineering research to the practitioners in the field. In addition to the usual modes of dissemination in conferences, proceedings, journal articles, and courses, the collaboratory two-way learning and research tools developed through the STC quickly transmit knowledge between the academic partners and the partner organizations.