Anions influence the extraction of rutile nanoparticles from synthetic and lake water

Tianrui Zhao; Fangyuan Liu; Chunpeng Zhang; Xiaochen Chen

doi:10.1039/c9ra02419k

Anions influence the extraction of rutile nanoparticles from synthetic and lake water

RSC Adv. 2019 May 29;9(29):16767-16773. doi: 10.1039/c9ra02419k. eCollection 2019 May 24.

Authors

Tianrui Zhao^{1

2}, Fangyuan Liu^{1

3}, Chunpeng Zhang^{1

3}, Xiaochen Chen⁴

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Groundwater Resources and Environment, Ministry of Education, Jilin University Changchun 130021 China zhang_cp@jlu.edu.cn.
² State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology Harbin 150090 China.
³ Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Environment, Jilin University China.
⁴ Fujian Provincial Engineering Research Center of Rural Waste Recycling Technology, College of Environment and Resources, Fuzhou University Fuzhou 350108 China.

Abstract

Due to their recent widespread use, nanoparticles (NPs) may contaminate water sources and pose a health risk. Thus, it is important to understand the fate of NPs in order to evaluate potential threats. Here we show that the presence of anions influences the stability of NPs in synthetic and lake water. Concentrations of 0.3 and 3 mM PO₄ ^3- exhibited stronger stabilizing effects on NPs than 30 mM. Moreover, chloride ions promoted the coagulation of TiO₂ NPs over a range of concentrations (0.3-30 mM elicited similar effects). On the other hand, phosphate was found to hinder the coagulation effect. These results are expected to contribute to novel water purification strategies for the efficient removal of NPs. Further experiments should focus on the mechanism of phosphate on the removal of NPs in the coagulation/flocculation/sedimentation (C/F/S) process.