2025 AIChE Annual Meeting

(354d) Removal of Cyanotoxin and Trace Organics from Water with Encapsulated Metal Organic Frameworks

Authors

Philip Cox - Presenter, Mainstream Engineering Corporation
Andrew Wagner, University of Minnesota
Daniel San Roman, Mainstream Engineering
Vincent Storhaug, Mainstream Engineering
Increasing occurrence of cyanotoxin-producing harmful algal blooms represent a global problem and pose a significant ecotoxicological threat to humans, animals, and fish. Cyanotoxins are a diverse group of chemicals that represent a significant adverse human effect through dermal contact, consumption of fish from contaminated sources, and drinking contaminated water. While water treatment facilities can generally handle these toxins, rural or isolated communities, backpacking, and extreme surge events can lead to toxins ending up in drinking water.

Mainstream Engineering is developing composite engineered metal organic framework (MOF) structures that facilitate the use of high surface area MOFs to both remove and destroy harmful cycnaotoxins such as microcystins (MCs), nodularins (NODs), and anatoxin-a (ATX) in drinking water. Although a range of MOF materials have been shown to have good adsorption and catalytic properties for the destruction of cyanotoxins and a range of other organics their typically small particle size makes them hard to hard to use in drinking and other continuous water treatment systems. Through use of the engineered structures, we are able to integrate the small particle size materials with no loss of activity into a robust, stable, engineered structure without the introduction of hard to remove and potentially hazardous nanomaterials into the water. Mainstream is developing a scalable whole house and point-of-use (POU) water treatment system that combines an adsorbent and catalytic destruction process into a single drop-in device that can capture and remove cyanotoxins and other toxic organics from water. We will discuss the adsorption characteristics, kinetics, stability and overall cyclic performance of the engineered MOFs for the capture and destruction of cyanotoxins such as anatoxin-a from water. We will discuss the preliminary development and key aspects of the integration and optimization of the MOF materials into a device for the continuous removal of cyanotoxins in a scalable low power point of use device.