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Air Pollution

In addition to water treatment and environmental remediation, nanotechnology is currently improving air quality. Nanoparticles can be engineered to catalyze, or hasten, the reaction to transform environmentally pernicious gases into harmless ones. For example, many industrial factories that produce large amounts harmful gases employ a type of nanofiber catalyst made of magnesium oxide(Mg2O) to purify dangerous organic substances in the smoke. Although chemical catalysts already exist in the gaseous vapors from cars, nano-technology has a greater chance of reacting with the harmful substances in the vapors. This greater probability comes from the fact that nanotechnology can interact with more particles because of its greater surface area.

Additionally, research is currently being conducted to find out if nanoparticles can be engineered to separate car exhaust from methane or carbon dioxide , which has been known to damage the Earth’s ozone layer. In fact, John Zhu, a professor at the University of Queensland, is exploring the creation of a carbon nanotube(CNT) which can trap greenhouse gases hundreds of times more efficiently than current methods can.

Concerns about Green Nanotechnology

Although green nanotechnology poses many advantages over traditional methods, there is still much debate about the concerns brought about by nanotechnology. For example, since the nanoparticles are small enough to be absorbed into skin and/or inhaled, countries are mandating that additional research revolving around the impact of nanotechnology on organisms be heavily studied. In fact, the field of eco-nanotoxicology was founded solely to study the effect of nanotechnology on earth and all of its organisms. At the moment, scientists are unsure of what will happen when nanoparticles seep into soil and water. Organizations, such as NanoImpactNet, have set out to study these effects.

Cleaning Up Oil Spills

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents more than ten thousand oil spills per year. Conventionally, biological, dispersing, and gelling agents are deployed to remedy oil spills. Although, these methods have been used for decades, none of these techniques can retrieve the irreplaceable lost oil. However, nanowires can not only swiftly clean up oil spills but also recover as much oil as possible. These nanowires form a mesh that absorbs up to twenty times its weight in hydrophobic liquids while rejecting water with its water repelling coating. Since the potassium manganese oxide is very stable even at high temperatures, the oil can be boiled off the nanowires and both the oil and the nanowires can then be reused.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina damaged or destroyed more than thirty oil platforms and nine refineries. The Interface Science Corporation successfully launched a new oil remediation and recovery application, which used the water repelling nanowires to clean up the oil spilled by the damaged oil platforms and refineries.

Nanotechnology for sensors

In today’s world perpetual exposure to heavy metal pollution and particulate matter will lead to alarming health concerns such as lung cancer, heart conditions, and even motor neuron diseases. However, humanity’s ability to shield themselves from these health problems can be improved by accurate and swift nanocontact-sensors able to detect pollutants at the atomic level. These nanocontact sensors do not require much energy to detect metal ions or radioactive elements. Additionally, they can be made in automatic mode so that they can be readably used at any given moment. Additionally, these nanocontact sensors are energy and cost effective since they are composed with conventional microelectronic manufacturing equipment using electrochemical techniques.

Some examples of nano-based monitoring include:

• Functionalized nanoparticles able to form anionic oxidants bonding thereby allowing the detection of carcinogenic substances at very low concentrations.

• Polymer nanospheres have been developed to measure organic contaminates in very low concentrations

• “Peptide nanoelectrodes have been employed based on the concept of thermocouple. In a ‘nano-distance separation gap, a peptide molecule is placed to form a molecular junction. When a specific metal ion is bound to the gap; the electrical current will result conductance in a unique value. Hence the metal ion will be easily detected.”

• Composite electrodes, a mixture of nanotubes and copper, have been created to detect substances such as organophosphorus pesticides, carbohydrates and other woods pathogenic substances in low concentrations.

Removing Plastic from Oceans

One innovation of green nanotechnology that is currently under development are nano- machines modeled after a bacteria bioengineered to consume plastics, Ideonella sakainesis. These nano-machines are able to decompose plastics dozens of times faster than the bioengineered bacteria not only because of their increased surface area but also because of the fact that the energy released from decomposing the plastic is used to fuel the nano-machines.

Nanotech to Disinfect Water Nanotechnology provides an alternative solution to clean germs in water, a problem that has been getting worse due to the population explosion, growing need for clean water and emergence of additional pollutants. One of the alternatives offered is antimicrobial nanotechnology stated that several nanomaterials showed strong antimicrobial properties through diverse mechanisms, such as photocatalytic production of reactive oxygen species that damage cell components and viruses.