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Caleb Guerra, Nicholas Spader, and Dr. Bal Khatiwada, Department of Science and Mathematics, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, 2802 Moore Hwy, Tifton, GA 31793
Heavy metal pollution has become an increasing problem around the world due to industrialization and modernization. Humans are migrating into cities where more factories are being built to compensate for the demands of the increasing population. Factories use and produce heavy metals, which are non-biodegradable materials that lead to the pollution of local water sources when disposed of improperly. One of those heavy metals is Palladium and it is known for being extremely toxic and carcinogenic to humans. This heavy metal has been exceedingly prevalent in car factories, where it is used as a catalytic converter, and in pharmaceutical labs. Our research is focused on the removal of Palladium ions using Diatomaceous Earth (DE) silica from Palladium containing water samples. Previous findings from other research have shown that silica nanoparticles are effective in the removal of Palladium ions from water. We chose DE as a filtering material because of its porous nature, polar functional (silanol) group on the surface, and high surface area. Silanol binds strongly with Palladium ions by ion-dipole interaction, which facilitates removing the ions from water. To determine the concentration of the Palladium ions in the water samples, we used Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES) before and after filtration. In our preliminary results, we found that DE can remove Palladium ions up to 171 ppm (mg of Pd2+/L). However, we expect the DE filtration system to exhibit greater adsorption capacity beyond the upper limit that we have tested so far. In the future, we also plan to compare the filtration ability of the DE system with a hybrid filtration system of DE and activated charcoal for the filtration of Palladium ions from water.
Presenters: Caleb Guerra, Nicholas Spader
Institution: Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
Type: Poster
Subject: Chemistry
Status: Approved