Persistent organic carbon in aquatic systems – analytical insights into carboxylic rich alicyclic molecules

There is an urgent need to better understand persistent matter that remains in drinking water after treatment and also represents long-term sequestration of atmospheric carbon dioxide to aquatic systems.

A large portion of this persistent, unreactive material is hypothesised to be carboxylic rich alicyclic molecules (CRAM), which have never before been isolated, synthesised or assessed for toxicity or reactivity.This molecular system is highly complex, which complicates research and limits the possibility of simple analytical results that can be applied in remote or continuous operations.

The research is therefore directed towards the first ever synthesis of a representative library of pure CRAM compounds (P1), determination of the chemical space occupied by natural CRAM and development of simple analytical methods for CRAM quantification (P2), and assessment of their toxicity and secondary effects on toxicity assays in drinking water systems (P3).

The second half of the proposed work will determine the reactivity and abundance of CRAM in a range of natural systems and drinking water production processes (P4) and evaluate the global distribution of CRAM in freshwaters worldwide for assessment of their importance in dissolved organic matter persistence (P5).The proposed work is intended to be extremely high impact, harnessing cross-disciplinary science available in Uppsala and providing important results and methods to the drinking water and biogeochemistry communities.