Mexico.- Researchers from the Metropolitan Autonomous University develop polymers to clean water and absorb carbon dioxide from the environment.
The team of Judith Cardoso Martínez, academic of the Department of Physics of the Iztapalapa Unit, designs a methodology to treat the water of industries that require large quantities of the resource, particularly the self-washing, “in which we have put plants that have enabled a 95 percent recovery.”
The national researcher, Level II, of the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt) detailed that the material they use for this purpose is a bio-based polymer that triggers a physical-chemical process, which is added to contaminated water and interacts with suspended particles that clump in when in contact with it, allowing water to be cleaned.
They also develop in collaboration with the National Polytechnic Institute resins based on polymeric products to remove heavy metals such as chromium the arsenic from the water that is extracted from deep wells in semi-arid areas.
Another work is focused on resins to absorb and mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) in the environment. By concentrating CO2 on resins it will be possible to generate higher value-added products to transform it into ethanol, methanol, biofuels or other compounds that are used as raw material, according to the researcher.
The specialist said that the use of polymers is very important in various fields of research, because in medicine they will replace and regenerate certain areas of the human body in addition to being useful in the elaboration of materials and in processes of purification of combating air pollution,
“Polymers are wonderful materials, and today they are a niche opportunity to resolve pollution issues that in the case of Mexico are several and have little technological development generally, so we work with imported material”, concluded the researcher.
