ASMCS: Improving water filtration with biobased nanomaterials

ASMCS: Improving water filtration with biobased nanomaterials

The Annual Surface and Materials Chemistry Symposium takes place on the 20th-21st of October and the two days will be packed with interesting presentations.

One of the presentations will be held by Andrea Aguilar Sanchez, who is currently at the end of her PhD project within the field of materials chemistry at Stockholm university. Her focus is primarily on nanopolysaccharide coatings and in her presentation Waterborne functional coating based polysaccharide nanoparticles, she will talk about a project where the aim was to see if such coatings could improve the performance and give new functionalities to different types of water filtration membranes.

The project was done in collaboration with an industry partner, that supplied her with membranes that are currently on the market.

Andrea Aguilar Sanchez.
Photo: private

– We wanted to see if we could improve these membranes using biobased nanomaterials. The results showed that the membranes kept their good performance with our coatings and that they also gained some new qualities, such as anti-fouling properties, avoiding biofilm formation from different bacterial strains, together with dye adsorption and separation of microplastics, says Andrea Aguilar Sanchez.

The coatings were based on cellulose and chitin nano-crystals, which means that the material is both biobased and derived from renewable resources.

Since the membrane project was done as an industry collaboration one aim was to show that membranes with the coatings can be used in real life. The focus now is on upscaling for the industry and to see what more the coatings could be used for.

– If we get good results showing that we can delay the biofilm formation for example, the coatings may be used by the medical industry in the future.

Who should listen to your presentation?

– Here in Sweden a lot of people might be interested, since I will be talking about possible solutions to current challenges using materials from renewable resources. Also, researchers and companies that work with modification of surfaces may be interested.

Read more about the Annual Surface and Materials Chemistry Symposium on the webpage ASMCS – Annual Surface and Materials Chemistry Symposium 20 – 21 October 2021

Andrea Aguilar Sanchez. Born in Costa Rica, where she received a Bachelor degree in Materials science and Engineering. This was followed by a Master degree with a focus on biobased polymer materials and composites in the Politechnic University of Catalonia (Spain) and Luleå University of Technology (Sweden). She is currently doing a PhD at the Materials chemistry department at Stockholm university, where she has six months left.