Innovation

Nowadays, filtering materials such as activated carbons, which retain pollutants by concentrating the adsorbents in their microporous structure, get regenerated through high temperature treatments or, worse, are disposed after a single use. Indeed, an innovative and sustainable adsorbent reactivation technology will be afforded in PHOTOPAD by the integration of ceria photocatalytic nanoparticles into the porous structures. The use of CeNPs in (photo)catalysis will be especially pronounced in the near future due to the general growing focus of researchers towards clean energy methods. In particular, use of nanoceria may improve selectivity and catalytic efficiency by means of engineered surface sites and composition, tuning the material redox activity and absorption onset.

PHOTOPAD materials, characterized by high adsorption capacity and solar light-driven photocatalytic activity, are designed to be reusable for multiple cycles of adsorption, being regenerable without the need of chemical or high temperatures treatments, thanks to visible light activated nanosized photocatalytic NPs. Moreover, the regeneration process proposed in PHOTOPAD, based on the simultaneous in-situ pollutants degradation and adsorbent reactivation, without production of secondary waste, meet the priority of increase adsorbents’ lifetimes bearing to high level of reusability and low-cost of regeneration treatments. PHOTOPAD will advance beyond state of the art and provide a significant step forward in materials and processes designed for sustainable and efficient water treatment, expanding the scientific knowledge and contributing to technological innovation in the field of water filtering materials for pollutants removal from natural resources, fully in line with the UN SDG and the PNRR directions.