Designing a Novel Water Filter to Remove Pharmaceuticals Using Nanomaterials

Overview

41 million people in the U.S. are exposed to drug contaminated water every day. In fact, traceable amounts of pharmaceuticals have been found in over 80 percent of water samples taken from various streams and water supplies. Despite this, conventional methods of water purification fail to effectively remove emerging contaminants. The most common method for water purification, reverse osmosis, only removes forty-five percent of pharmaceuticals. According to the World Health Organization, some conventional methods remove as little as 5% of pharmaceuticals, much lower than acceptable ranges. Understanding current methods to be ineffective, the purpose of this project was to 1) determine whether graphene and carbon nanotubes have strong attractions to estradiol, a pharmaceutical drug, and 2) determine which carbon-based nanomaterial is the most effective at removing estradiol from water. Carbon nanotubes and graphene are made out of carbon, a ubiquitous material that can easily be mass-produced which makes them accessible. This research specifically targeted the removal of estradiol because of its hexagonal shape and high contamination rates. The bond nature between the molecule and the drug was found by calculating absorbency energies between estradiol and each nanomaterial. Molecules were created using the program Material Studio. The absorbency energies were calculated using a state of the art computational simulation model that uses first-principle calculations, Vienna Ad- Initio Simulation Package (VASP). In order to use the program, four files were made using Fortran. Once absorbency energies were found, R was used to perform welch T Tests. Graphene was found to have significantly higher absorbency energies than carbon nanotubes, indicating that it is an effective filter to remove pharmaceuticals from water. It also had an energy that suggested strong physical bonds were present, showing it is reusable. The carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, had weak physical bonds that would not attract the pharmaceuticals. Therefore, graphene has the potential to be an effective filter that removes pharmaceuticals at acceptable rates. This research is a foundational step towards developing a water purification device that increases access to clean water for everyone.

Competition history

• AJAS 2020 Category not listed

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