Removing Hazardous Materials from Water Using Polymer Hydrogel

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, hazardous materials such as heavy metal ions, metalloid ions, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals dissolved in water have damaged human beings and other living organisms. Because of their high toxicity for human health, the removal of metal ions from wastewater has been of interest to numerous researchers, and various removal methods have been developed and applied to treat contaminated water, such as coprecipitation, membrane separation, ion exchange, extraction, and adsorption. Among them, adsorption is widely used because of its simple technology, high efficiency, and low secondary pollution risk. However, some conventional adsorbents have many drawbacks, such as an expensive price, few adsorbent sites, and small absorption capacity, which limits their application.

Polymer adsorbents have been the most popular approaches for metal and metalloid removal from industrial wastewater. Among them, hydrogels have attracted much research interest due to their high potential for removing hazardous materials because of the availability of many functional groups which enhance their absorption capability. Hydrogels are easy to separate from water after adsorption via simple filtering because it is easy to control their shape and size in preparation. Therefore, hydrogels are important and smart materials for the field of water treatment.

This Special Issue focuses on the preparation of physical and chemical gels, including composites, and the mechanism of adsorption, for example, electrostatic interaction, hydrophobic interaction, and molecular interaction for applications in the removal of hazardous materials from water.

Dr. Takehiko Gotoh
Prof. Dr. Yoshimi Seida
Guest Editors

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