If there was a presidential award in our country for the implementation of the principles of "green" chemistry in chemical technology, as in the United States, IHF scientists could rightly claim it.
In the world, "green" chemistry is seen as a social movement and a scientific field that offers the development of technologies that use more efficient chemical reactions. It is related to "the discovery, development and application of chemical processes that reduce or eliminate the use and formation of harmful substances.” This is how the International Union of Theoretical and Practical Chemistry IUPAC interprets the concept of "green chemistry".
"Green" chemistry offers two directions of development: processing, utilization and destruction of environmentally hazardous by-products and spent products of the chemical industry and development of new industrial processes that do not cause emissions of environmentally harmful products or minimize their use and formation.
Research conducted at the Department of Ecology and Plant Polymers Technology (ERP) concerns, in particular, processing and utilization. Recently at the competition of startups, which took place in Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute within the framework of the X Festival of Innovative Projects "Sikorsky Challenge 2021: Ukraine and the world ", the project of scientists of the department of ERP" Biosorbents for water purification "became the finalist in the category" Biomedical engineering and human health ".
The project aims to obtain highly effective multifunctional biosorbents - absorbers of organic and inorganic toxicants. The following people worked on the research: Doctor of technical science, Professor M.D. Gomelia - Head of the Department, doctor of technical sciences, Professor V.M. Radovenchyk, Ph.D., Associate Professor V.V. Galysh, doctor of technical science, associate professor I.M.Trus, students B.Bokhonets and O.Orlova. The authors kindly agreed to talk about their development.
"Today, one of the promising areas of chemical technology is the development of technological processes using renewable plant materials," says Vita Galysh. - And among the priority tasks in the field of environmental protection is the search for effective and safe wastewater treatment technologies. Studies in recent years have shown that expensive industrial sorbents can be replaced by materials derived from natural raw materials, based on a lignocellulosic complex, which is a biopolymer that is easily modified. It should be added that natural biopolymers of plant origin have a number of valuable properties due to which they can be used in chemical, food, pharmaceutical and many other industries.
The story of a colleague is supplemented by Inna Trus: "Researchers are particularly interested in the possibility of using renewable raw materials in the production of materials and products designed to improve the environment and solve problems associated with man-made pollution of water bodies by various toxicants, including heavy metal ions, radioactive elements, petroleum products, etc. ".
According to researchers, it is important that when using "green" technology both in Ukraine and in the world, each region can choose its raw material base depending on the specifics of industrial production.
"In the world, Ukraine is perceived as an agro-industrial state, which annually increases exports to Europe of plant products," says Professor Mykola Gomelia. - Therefore, a significant amount of technological waste of plant origin accumulates in our territory. One of the types of utilization of such waste is incineration. But if we process them, ie use them as secondary raw materials, we will have new products and materials with added value. For example, biosorbents are absorbing materials from plant raw materials. I consider it promising, from an economic point of view, to use waste from the agro-industrial complex as sorbents. "
Professor Vyacheslav Radovenchyk also informed about the advantages of biosorbents - environmental friendliness, low cost, annual renewable, high efficiency, simplicity and reliability of the sorption water treatment plant.
Responding to today's challenges, the Department of ERP on the basis of research developed effective technologies for biosorbents and their use in water purification from pollutants of various origins, which improves the environmental situation in Ukraine.