Using nanorobots to help clean heavy metals from polluted water

Bob Yirka is a writer for Phys.org.

A team of researchers has developed a way to remove heavy metals from water. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes how well theirnanorobots worked when tested.

Heavy metals can be found in the water table through landfill leaks, mining operations and industrial dumping. Current methods call for complicated multi-step procedures to remove heavy metals from water sources. The researchers report a possible alternative.

The researchers developed thermosensitive magnetic nanorobots that could bond with heavy metals under certain circumstances. The use of a tri-block copolymer as an attractant and iron oxide to allow for control via magnetic fields allowed for the creation of the 200 nanometers wide nanorobots. The copolymer is sensitive to temperature. The material bonds with heavy metals when placed in cool water. The metals were able to separate from the material when placed in warm water. In practice, this meant that a group of the nanorobots could be placed into a sample of cool water where they would bond with any heavy metals they encountered. The water could be heated and the metals could be released. The arrangement allows the reuse of the nanorobots.

The researchers put heavy metals in a tank of water. The sample was put in a bunch of their nanorobots and let them collect the metals for 100 minutes. The heavy elements had been removed from the water. The result was more than 50%. The work is still in a preliminary stage, but the researchers plan to continue testing their robot to see if they can be used in real-world settings.

More information: Jayraj V. Vaghasiya et al, Pick up and dispose of pollutants from water via temperature-responsive micellar copolymers on magnetite nanorobots, Nature Communications (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28406-5 Journal information: Nature Communications

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