Managing Tight Binding Receptors for New Separations Technologies
Ultra-strong Ligands Are Under Utilized Because They Are Slow. When the most challenging problems emerge it is often desirable to respond with the most powerful resources, but a seemingly perverse chemical relationship commonly prevents this in broad areas of chemical applications. When metals are present as accumulated waste or contaminants they are often manipulated by receptor molecules that are called ligands. The adduct that is formed is called a complex. Ligands are attached to chelating resins to take metal ions from solutions, and ligands are dissolved in solvents to separate metal ions in solvent extraction processes. In some cases, like solvent extraction, one does not want the ligand to hold on to the metal ion too tightly, but in other cases--for example trying to extract metal ions from very dilute solutions onto chelating resins, the stronger the binding the better, and that exemplifies the perversity. For ligands that achieve their great metal ion affinities through the intricacies of their molecular design--and the affinities can be enormous--big increases in metal ion affinity are accompanied by even bigger decreases in the rates at which they engulf the metal ion. This project has two major goals that relate to this molecular lethargy. The first involves molecular switches to replace the very slow equilibration when very strong ligands bind to metal ions. The second proposes a technology to use very strong ligands in such a way that the slowness of the reaction doesn't matter because the system can be given sufficient time to equilibrate.
- Research Organization:
- University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG07-96ER14708
- OSTI ID:
- 839382
- Report Number(s):
- EMSP-73850-2001; TRN: US200509%%640
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 1 Jun 2001
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Managing Tight Binding Receptors for New Separations Technologies
Managing Tight-binding Receptors for New Separations Technologies