WaTA Heavy Metal Absorbent

Generations of industrial pollution left many fresh water sources awash with harmful contaminants. The main contaminants include heavy metals such as mercury and lead, bacteria, and suspended solids. Current methods for water treatment use chlorine to kill bacteria but do little to remove heavy metals. Having high concentrations of heavy metals in drinking water is especially dangerous due to their ability to inhibit brain development and cause chronic illness. The purpose of the Silva group at WaTA (Water Technology Accelerator) is to identify and remove fresh water contaminants efficiently. Zeolite is a sand-like, porous, composite with the ability to absorb heavy metals when functionalized. Functionalization requires thorough cleaning, sonication with chemical additives, and repeated heating and cooling steps. After fabrication, the functionalized zeolite is ready to be tested with variable lead and mercury batches. There are five parameters considered when creating the solutions; temperature (4-40°C), initial concentration (10-50 ppm), time (.5-24 hours), molecule size (75-1000 microns), and pH (3-7). To measure the filtration efficiency, the initial solution is compared with the final solution. Comparison between batches is necessary to know exactly how much mercury and lead absorption is possible. Zeolite is already known to be able to remove heavy metals from water, but to what extent? The overreaching goal is to refine zeolite filtration, share the findings with industries and ultimately make effective and inexpensive water filtration available to the public