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NEWS OF THE WEEK
CHEMIST WINS ARSENIC CHALLENGE
AWARDS: Million-dollar prize goes to simple system to treat
contaminated drinking water
A NALYTICAL CHEMISTRY professor Abul Hus sam of George Mason University, in Fairfax, Va., has won the $i million Grainger Challenge
Prize for Sustainability for designing a simple, inexpensive system for filtering naturally occurring arsenic from drinking water. Hussam's design, which uses buckets of river sand, pieces of cast iron, and charcoal, is already preventing serious health problems for thousands of people in his native country of Bangladesh.
The National Academy of Engineering established the Grainger Prize in February 2005 t 0 accelerate U.S. development of technologies for improving living standards throughout the world (C&EN, Feb. 7,2005, page 10). The prize is sponsored by the Grainger Foundation, a philanthropic organization named after William W. Grainger, an electrical engineer. The challenge for the first contest was the design of an affordable system to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water to below 50 ug/L, which is the standard in most developing countries.
Naturally occurring arsenic contaminates the drinking water of tens of millions of people worldwide, especially in parts of South
A boy pours SONO-filtered water in Bangladesh.
America and Asia. Arsenic poisoning from consuming moderate amounts of the toxic element is a slow, debilitating process that ultimately can result in death.
Hussam takes the Grainger Gold Award for his SONO filter system that can be used at community or residential wells. The first stage of the two-tiered system is a plastic bucket filled with a layer of locally available coarse river sand and a layer of processed cast iron material known as composite iron matrix. The sand removes sediment, and the iron traps soluble inorganic arsenic compounds.
The second stage is a bucket containing a layer of coarse sand, a layer of wood charcoal (activated carbon), and a final layer of fine sand and brick chips. The charcoal adsorbs organic arsenic compounds, while the fine sand and brick chips remove finer particles. The design met the competition rules that the system be affordable, reliable, and socially acceptable.
SONO filters are being manufactured in Bangladesh, and thousands of them, each costing less than $40, have been distributed. Hussam plans to spend most of his $1 million winnings to distribute SONO filters to needy communities through a nongovernmental organization he has formed with his brother, who is a physician. The remainder of the funds will be used to further his research.
In addition to the Gold Award, a Silver Award of % $200,000 is being given to researchers working in I conjunction with the Denver-based nonprofit or-3 ganization Water For People for an alumina-based < ion-exchange column that attaches to well pumps. ° A Bronze Award of $100,000 goes to Procter & H Gamble's Children's Safe Drinking Water Program, g which has provided millions of individual packets of 3 the company's PUR water-purification chemicals to
treat 10-L batches of water in developing countries (C&EN, April 17,2006, page 39).
The prizes will be presented officially on Feb. 20 in Washington, D.C. The goal for the next Grainger Challenge has not been announced.—STEVE RITTER
GREEN CHEMISTRY AGS, pharma initiative awards first grant
The Pharmaceutical Roundtable of the Green Chemistry Institute, a division of the American Chemical Society, has awarded its first research grant as part of a broad effort to advance green chemistry and engineering practices in the global pharmaceutical industry. The $130,000 grant goes to chemistry professor Jian-liang Xiao of the University of Liverpool, in England, whose group will seek to develop a cleaner, more efficient method of reducing amides to amines, an important transformation in drug synthesis.
Together with major pharmaceutical
firms, the Green Chemistry Institute established the Pharmaceutical Roundtable in 2005. Made up of pharmaceutical industry representatives, the group spent its first year singling out seven common reactions and processes that need cost and environmental improvements, including the amide reduction, and drawing up a wish list of five reactions that chemists would like to add to their research arsenals (C&EN, July 24,2006, page 36).
Last fall, the roundtable called for proposals to address the targeted reactions and processes; from a pool of 32 interna
tional applicants, it selected Xiao's work for the first grant. Xiao's group plans to uncover high-yield hydrogenation catalysts that work under mild conditions in reactions that can be carried out in water instead of an organic solvent.
The roundtable anticipates awarding $500,000 worth of grants for basic research in the next couple of years, and it's exploring the possibility of expanding the program by partnering with other funding agencies, according to Julie B. Manley, the program's coordinator.— STEVE RITTER
WWW.CEN-0NLINE.ORG T Q FEBRUARY 12, 2007
