fairfolio
Saved Projects

Photocatalytic Water Purification

CSEF · 2018 Environmental Engineering

Nicole M. Abudayeh · Christ the King Catholic School, Pleasant Hill, Contra Costa County

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective is to find the best substance to be used as a catalyst in the photocatalytic water purification. Methods/Materials I tested Titanium Dioxide, Zinc Oxide, Iron Sulfate, Sodium Fluoride, and Magnesium Malate, because they are good semiconductors, and they absorb light easily, which are the two main characteristics of photocatalysts. I added the different substances to 16OZ water bottles filled with river water, then I used agar petri dishes to grow bacteria from the original collected river water as well as the water treated by the 5 different catalysts after 3 different time lapses (10, 15, and 20 hours). I checked the bacteria growth of the original water and the water treated by the photocatalysts after each sun exposure period applying the Petroff-Hausser cell counter method, using a grid and a microscope to count the number of bacteria on each agar petri dish, and I compared the results. Results The data showed that Magnesium Malate, unlike the other photocatalysts, was able to eliminate all traces of bacteria in water within 20 hours. Magnesium Malate gave the best results for photocatalytic water purification. Magnesium has a vital role in plants' photosynthesis, it can absorb large amounts of light at a time, so it is a powerful photocatalyst to start the oxidation process of the microorganisms for photocatalysis. Conclusions/Discussion The performance of Magnesium Malate as a catalyst that harnesses the UV radiation from sunlight and uses the energy to break down a wide variety of organic materials, organic acids, pesticides, and microbes, was proven to be superior then other catalysts. Using Magnesium Malate as a photocatalyst and the sun UV light for water purification is an environmentally friendly, sustainable and inexpensive solution, especially for addressing drinking water quality issues in the developing countries, as well as disinfecting water after natural disasters.

Summary statement

I found that Magnesium Malate is the best catalyst to be used in photocatalytic water purification

Help received

None. I performed the experiment myself

Competition history

  • CSEF 2018 Environmental Engineering · Entry J1101

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google