For more information on this presentation, please contact Claire Stringer.
The Advanced Materials Research Group (AMRG) would like to welcome you to attend the following seminar:
Copper and zinc sulfate footbaths are used to prevent bacterial diseases on cattle hooves, but are often disposed of into slurry tanks containing other dairy farm waste, including antibiotic-contaminated milk, urine and faeces. Due to the co-selection effects of heavy metals, the process of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) may be accelerated in the slurry tank, which is later used as fertiliser, resulting in the contamination of land with heavy metals and concurrent spread of AMR. A process to remediate copper and zinc from the footbath to prevent subsequent issues with AMR is thus required.
Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are a class of highly porous sorbent materials with large internal surface areas. Unlike other sorbents, the pore environment of MOFs can be tuned to sorb specific substrates. The design and synthesis of MOFs tailored to remove copper and zinc from waste cow footbath solution, for the reduction of co-selection drivers in this matrix, is discussed here.
Two MOFs (MIL-53(Al) and MIL-53(Al)-NH2) that are predicted to be suitable for copper and zinc uptake have been synthesised in high yield using microwave heating, in significantly shorter reaction times than conventional solvothermal methods (10 mins, c.f. to 24 hrs). Optimisation of the MIL-53(Al)-NH2 synthesis is currently in progress, including investigation of reactant ratios and solvent used. A number of techniques are employed to characterise these MOFs; powder X-ray diffraction and thermogravimetric analyses are discussed in detail here. Future work will involve investigating whether these materials are appropriate for metal sorption.
Faculty of EngineeringThe University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD
email:AdvMaterials@nottingham.ac.uk