Water is essential for all forms of life. The single most important technological need for developing countries is the development of safe, low-cost, purification methods to disinfect and detoxify water. The core of the research at The Institute for Green Science (IGS) at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA is based on the development of tetra-amido macrocyclic ligand (TAML^®) catalysts for the activation of hydrogen peroxide in order to destroy chemical pollutants in water.

The research groups of Terry Collins and Alexander Ryabov at IGS, in collaboration with the group of Sayam Sen Gupta, CSIR National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India, have studied and compared the catalytic activity and operational stability of a series of fifth generation of TAML activators in the oxidation of Orange II by hydrogen peroxide. One of the members of this series performs very well at pH 7, the most common acidity conditions for water treatment.

They have found that the introduction of a nitro substituent is beneficial for increasing the operational stability of TAMLs in oxidations by H₂O₂. In addition, they have shown that one of the members of this series, with a biuret functional group in the macrocycle, performs very well at neutral pH, the most common acidity conditions for water treatment.

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• Reactivity and Operational Stability of N-Tailed TAMLs through Kinetic Studies of the Catalyzed Oxidation of Orange II by H₂O₂: Synthesis and X-ray Structure of an N-Phenyl TAML,
  Genoa R. Warner, Matthew R. Mills, Clarissa Enslin, Shantanu Pattanayak, Chakadola Panda, Tamas Kumar Panda, Sayam Sen Gupta, Alexander D. Ryabov, Terrence J. Collins,
  Chem. Eur. J. 2015.
  DOI: 10.1002/chem.201406061

 

If you want to find out more about the use of TAMLS for water purification see the poster ENVR 407 by Matthew Mills at the 249th ACS National Meeting & Exposition in Denver, USA, in Hall C Colorado Convention Center either at the SCI-MIX poster session on Monday March 23, 8:00–10:00pm or at ENVR: General Posters on Wednesday March 25th, 6:00–8:00pm.

 

• More on the 249th ACS Meeting