Dichtel Group
A porous material
made from cup-shaped cyclodextrins, which rapidly bind
pollutants and
remove them from contaminated water.
(December 21, 2015) We’ve
all seen the Febreze air fresheners, which employ a derivative of corn starch
to trap invisible air pollutants in the home and remove unwanted odors.
A team of Cornell researchers has used the same material
found in Febreze, cyclodextrin, to develop a technique that could revolutionize
the water-purification industry.
The team is led by Will Dichtel, associate professor of
chemistry and chemical biology and a 2015 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship
winner. His group invented a porous form of cyclodextrin that has displayed
uptake of pollutants through adsorption at rates vastly superior to traditional
activated carbon – 200 times greater in some cases.
Activated carbons have the advantage of larger surface area
than previous polymers made from cyclodextrin – “more sites for pollutants to
stick to,” Dichtel said – but they don’t bind pollutants as strongly as
cyclodextrin.
“What we did is make the first high-surface-area material
made of cyclodextrin,” Dichtel said, “combining some of the advantages of the
activated carbon with the inherent advantages of the cyclodextrin. When you
combine the best features of those two materials, you get a material that’s
even better than either class.