Through a CERES grant from the University of Cambridge, we designed a series of filter materials and technology demonstrators to eliminate some of the most common Plant Protection Product used in the UK. These are known as aminopyralid, isoxaflutole, metaldehyde, quinmerac and chlormequat. Using computational design, we calculated the optimum polymer structures to trap these compounds and manufactured a technology demonstrator.
Our materials (Figure 1) successfully removed most of the product from water samples contaminated with these compounds. Using different characterisation techniques, we established physical and chemical characteristics of the materials. One of these techniques is Scanning Electron Microscopy (Figure 2).
