Most places in the world rely on thermal power stations to obtain their electric power. Thermal power stations work by converting heat energy into electric power, mainly through the use of fossil fuels like coal. This conversion, however, reaps a very toxic byproduct known as fly ash (FA). Fly ash causes a multitude of environmental problems, such as air pollution and ground water. Last year, over 110 million tons of FA was generated. Despite its obvious faults, researchers in South Korea have discovered a new way of incorporating FA into their efforts of environmental remediation. By using an electrospinning technique, FA particles were incorporated with zinc oxide nanofibers (ZnO NFs) to create a (FA/ZnO) composite product. ZnO NFs aid preventing decontamination in water through photocatalysis and adsorption by attracting contaminating organic atoms to themselves. They compared the efficiency of this composite product to pristine ZnO by observing their adsorption of methylene blue. With the inclusion of FA particles, they found that FA/ZnO composite not only showed an increase in adsorption capacity, but also an improvement in is photocatalytic efficiency. They are attributing these improvements to its large effective surface area, which is 24.54 m2/g compared to ZnO NFs 18.76 m2/g, along with its increased electrical conductivity. With this newfound knowledge, researchers hope that the synthesized composite is a promising material for future endeavors in preventing the contamination of bodies of water.
Kim H., Ojha G.P., Pant B., Park M., and Park S. 2018. Fly-ash-incorporated electrospun zinc oxide nanofibers: Potential material for environmental remediation. Environ. Pollu. in press https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.10.122
Reference
Kim H., Ojha G.P., Pant B., Park M., and Park S. 2018. Fly-ash-incorporated electrospun zinc oxide nanofibers: Potential material for environmental remediation. Environ. Pollu. in press https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.10.122
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