Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Pollution/Toxic Substances/Waste
Okeoghene Osevwe - Howard University
Floral quinolone are the fourth most prescribed antibiotic in the world. It has been shown that the mix of floral quinolone residues with other active pharmaceutical components could release inhibiting effects of growth and genotoxicity amongst aquatic species. The negative effects of these components on the aquatic ecosystems and on human health, necessitate the development of treatment techniques to eliminate them. So, the global objective of this research is to remove ofloxacin antibiotic in water by photodegradation on titaniferous sands.
The removal of ofloxacin fluoroquinolone antibiotic by photodegradation has been investigated using titaniferous sands as a catalyst under solar light. The process was carried out at optimum pH, antibiotic solution concentration and titaniferous sands concentration determined by previous work. The optimum conditions for degradation of the ofloxacin were discovered to be 160g/L concentration of the sand and 200g/L concentration of the solution with pH of 6.5. In order to determine the removal of antibiotic from the water, Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) measurements were carried out before the treatment and at intervals during the treatment and a significant decrease in the values were observed. The COD elimination rate shifted from 57.14% to 71.4% by introduction of solar light for the photodegradation process. The results showed the importance of photo degradation in the elimination of antibiotic ofloxacin from wastewater. Future studies need to be done on other variables such as the size and the structure of the photocatalyst and reaction temperature to determine their optimum values.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): Funding was provided by an NSF grants to Lorraine Fleming, Ph.D, Wayne Patterson, Ph.D and Mohamed Chouikha, Ph.D., Principal and CoPrincipal Investigators of the Global Education, Awareness and Research Undergraduate Program (GEAR UP).
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Stacie LeSure, stacie.lesure@Howard.edu
Role: I determined the optimum values for the experiment and then conducted the experiment at optimum values in sunlight. I then tested the samples to determine photodegradation rate then typed up the research paper. The research is very relevant as waste water is a problem and ways that it can be depolluted are important.