Wastewater Purification: Fabrication of a Low-Cost Water Filtration System to Remove Heavy Metal Ions in Wastewater Using Waste Tea and Coffee

Overview

Water contamination has been one of the world's leading issues for the past few decades, with the problem only growing worse through industrialization. Over 6 billion pounds of tea (Tea Fact Sheet) and 19 billion pounds (The World Counts) of coffee are produced each year, and most of it goes directly to our overfilled landfills. The waste- tea leaves and coffees that are tossed into landfills are a real-life gem mine that present the opportunity to purify water not only once, but multiple times, as a low cost and low economic value adsorbent. The pollution of heavy metals such as copper (II) and nickel (II) affect townships and cities across the world. In order to assess the capabilities of waste tea and waste coffee to purify contaminated water, boiled waste teas and waste coffees were stirred into a heavy metal ion contaminated water (nickel(II) and copper(II)) for various times. The concentrations of the heavy metal ions were monitored in real time using commercial copper(II) test kits or using Lambert Beer's Law spectroscopy. Additionally, the waste biosorbents were tested in a prototype model filtration system that could be applied into a real world scenario in third world countries that cannot afford proper equipment. This study examines the abilities of five different types of waste teas (Assam, Tulsi, Darjeeling, Oolong, & Lipton) and waste coffee in removing heavy metal ion contaminants and their applications in a low-cost filtration system

Competition history

• JSHS 2020 Category not listed

Resources

• National JSHS abstract book ↗

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