Recently, researchers from the Institute of Quality Standards and Testing Technology for Agro-Products of CAAS have designed a new Hg(II) adsorbent based on functional graphdiyne oxide (GDYO-3M) for efficient and rapid removal of mercury in environmental water for the first time. The research progress was published in the  Journa1 of Hazardous Materials .

Considering the serious risks posed by the mercury to environmental quality and human health, it remains extremely important to quickly, efficiently and easily remove and detect Hg(II) in water in practice. It was found that the active sites of GDYO-3M in the adsorption of Hg(II) mainly include sulfhydryl groups, oxygen-containing functional groups and acetylene bonds. Due to the presence of sulfhydryl groups, the membrane prepared from GDYO-3M showed excellent selectivity and specificity for Hg(II). This new Hg(II) enrichment membrane can remove 10 L of Hg(II) with a concentration of 0.1mg/L within 1 hour with only 4 cm diameter membrane, with a removal rate of more than 97%. In the meantime, the GDYO-3M membrane represents a favorable reproducibility (above 95% Hg(II) removal) after 9 successive adsorption-desorption cycles. Further, the GDYO-3M membrane can be utilized as an enrichment approach for sensitive analysis of Hg(II) in water based on portable energy dispersion X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (ED-XRF), and the detection limit (LOD) can reach 0.2 μg/L after enrichment process within only 10 min. This work doesn’t only provide a green and efficient method for removing Hg(II) with various levels, but also renders an approach for rapid, sensitive and portable Hg(II) detection in water samples.

Figure 1 Adsorption mechanism diagram

This research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program (2023YFD1702400), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32072307) and the Science and Technology Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS-ASTIP-IQSTAP-2024).

Link: doi:10.1016/j.jhazmat.2024.133711.

By Xuefei Mao (mxf08@163.com)