Massachusetts: Researchers have developed a new filtration material that can tackle this persistent pollution problem naturally. Materials made from natural silk and cellulose are capable of effectively filtering a wide variety of heavy metals along with large amounts of chemicals.
According to Yilian Zhang, a postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, contamination with PFAS and similar compounds is a significant problem, and current solutions can only partially solve the problem efficiently or at low cost. That’s why the team developed a natural solution based on a protein and cellulose.
Benedito Marelli, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, explained that their filtration material was actually made possible by technology developed to create a labeling system to combat counterfeit seeds. His team found a way to process silk proteins into uniform nanoscale crystals, or ‘nanofibrils’, using an environmentally friendly, water-based drop-casting method at room temperature.
Research by Zhang and his team shows that the new nanofibrillar material they developed could potentially be effective in filtering out pollutants. Initially, silk nanofibrils alone did not yield the desired results, leading the team to experiment with adding cellulose to the material. By taking advantage of a self-assembling method involving the suspension of silk fibrin protein in water and the templating of nanofibrils with cellulose nanocrystals, the researchers were able to produce hybrid materials with promising new properties. This integrated material in the form of a thin membrane showed high effectiveness in removing contaminants during laboratory tests, especially after the electrical charge of cellulose was reversed.
