The conservation and protection of the environment is essential for the health of both humans and other organisms and, therefore, has increased the urgency for methods of removal of both metal ions and nanoparticles from the environment. Heavy metal ions are the most significant environmental pollutants found in waste water, thus raising concerns regarding the long-term effects of metal ion exposure on human health and natural ecosystems. The metal ions that cause most concern for human and animal health include chromium, nickel, manganese and iron, together with various heavy metals, due to their toxic properties when consumed in large quantities. Research completed in UCC included mesoporous silica spheres being synthesised and functionalised and subsequently used as absorbents for metal ions, both single metal and mixed metal solutions as well as metallic nanoparticles. Single metal ion extraction was carried out over the pH range between 4 and 10 to identify the optimum pH for removing each metal ion. Metal ion extractions were also carried out in nonbuffered water to replicate the natural environmental conditions for these metal ions. The absorbents used for these extraction experiments consisted of mesoporous silicas functionalised with aminopropyl ligands (Si-NH), mesoporous silicas functionalised with a mercaptopropyl ligand (Si-SH) and mesoporous silicas functionalised with both aminopropyl and mercaptopropyl ligands (SH-Si-NH). Different metal ions form more stable complexes with either aminopropyl or mercaptopropyl ligands. The results of this study emphasise and support the idea that mesoporous silica materials can be tailored to specific applications. The relationship shown between material science and environmental science highlights that the remediation of pollutants from ecological systems could represent a new future direction in which nanomaterial research should be guided. Overall the results confirm that synthesised mesoporous material could be successfully applied for waste-water treatment in industry.

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Burke, A.   "The Use of Mesoporous Silicas to Absorb and Separate Metals and Nanoparticles from Aqueous or Organic Solutions". Associated datasets and digitial information objects connected to this resource are available at: Secure Archive For Environmental Research Data (SAFER) managed by Environmental Protection Agency Ireland https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/resource?id=d69262d6-2be6-102d-99dd-ef394edc666a (Last Accessed: 2025-01-20)

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SAFER-Data Display URL	https://eparesearch.epa.ie/safer/iso19115/display?isoID=134
Resource Keywords	Mesoporous Silicas MetalsNanoparticles Organic synthesised ions chromium, nickel, manganese iron
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Code	2005-ET-MS-30-M3
EPA/ERTDI/STRIVE Project Theme	Waste and Resource Management
Resource Availability:	Public-Open
Limitations on the use of this Resource	In the event of obtaining access to datasets corresponding to this resource any datasets, data, or information resources being used in a journal article or other means of publication the original authors should be informed of this usage and an appropriate acknowledgement or citation is included within the published article. The EPA advise that this acknowledgement should take one of the following forms dependent upon how heavily the published work relates to the downloaded data: * Co-Authorship(s) for the original author(s)* Written acknowledgement within the body of the article* Written acknowledgement by means of the inclusion of a bibliography entry which clearly cites the original authors.
Number of Attached Files (Publicly and Openly Available for Download):	3
Project Start Date	Sunday 1st May 2005 (01-05-2005)
Earliest Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Sunday 1st May 2005 (01-05-2005)
Most Recent Recorded Date within any attached datasets or digital objects	Friday 1st May 2009 (01-05-2009)
Published on SAFER	Thursday 26th November 2009 (26-11-2009)
Date of Last Edit	Thursday 26th November 2009 at 14:21:56 (26-11-2009)
Datasets or Files Updated On	Thursday 26th November 2009 at 14:21:56 (26-11-2009)

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Description of Geographical Characteristics of This Project or Dataset
This project was a laboratory based project. Non-buffered water and an environmental sample was supplied by the EPA. Parent silica samples and the functionalised silica samples were tested. There are no geographical linkages in the experimental setup.

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