Adsorbents can be selectively engineered for specific pollutants by tailoring their surface chemistry (functional groups), controlling pore size, using molecular imprinting techniques, adjusting charge or hydrophobicity, and creating composite materials. These approaches enable adsorbents to preferentially capture target contaminants even within complex environmental mixtures.

As an example. Here we target soft heavy metals:

Article Disulfide polymer grafted porous carbon composites for heavy...