Can Coffee Grounds Absorb Heavy Metals?

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective of this study is to find out whether used coffee grounds can absorb heavy metals from lead contaminated water. Methods/Materials Materials: ~168.816* milliliters of grounded spent coffee grounds, 1 Lead disk, Gloves to handle the lead, One 473.176 mL. paper cup, ~487.9632 milliliters of water (100 Celsius), ~236.588 milliliters of silicon, ~168.816 milliliters of sugar, 20 Heavy Metal test strips. Procedure: Gather materials and put on gloves. Pour boiling water into a cup. Immediately put one lead disk into the cup. Wait 24 hours. While waiting, mix all of the silicone, finely ground coffee and coarse sugar thoroughly. Using the lead test strips, measure and record the lead content of the water. Try to remove the sugar from the hardened silicone mixture so that it is porous. Cut up the hardened silicone mixture into small pieces of approximately 3 cm x 2 cm so that the water will have a greater exposure to the material .Put one fifth of the cut up hardened silicone mixtures into each cup of lead water .Wait 24 hours. Using the lead test strips, measure and record the lead content of the water. Dispose of the used silicone mixture and the water. Repeat steps 2-11 four more times. Calculate the average difference between the amount of lead before and after the silicone and coffee ground mixture is put in. Using a bar graph and Google Sheets, graph and compare the data. Results My results prove that when spent coffee grounds are left to sit for 24 hours in lead contaminated water, there is an average of 90% lead reduction in the water. Conclusions/Discussion The question answered in the project "Can Coffee Grounds Absorb Heavy Metals?" is, "Do used coffee grounds absorb heavy metals?" The data shows that the amount of lead in the water before the hard silicone mixture interacted with it is noticeably more than the amount of lead after the hard silicone mixture had been exposed to the lead water for 24 hours. Based on the results, the data shows that the average amount of lead after the silicone mixture exposure is about 5 ppb (parts per billion). This means that on average, 90% of the lead in the water was extracted by the hard silicone mixture in just 24 hours. Therefore, one can utilize the over 16 billion pounds of coffee grounds disposed of annually for the crucial purpose of water purification.

Competition history

• CSEF 2018 Environmental Engineering · Entry J1130

Resources

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