Essay On Chemistry And Agriculture

It is a prerequisite for human health and well-being” (“Water for Life”).Yet 11% of the world’s population does not have access to safe drinking water (“Millennium Development Goal”).

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Although effective, disadvantages include expensive equipment and frequent replacement of materials (“Water Treatment”; “About Activated Carbon Filtration”).

Locally available, low-cost materials as alternatives to activated carbon would be beneficial.

Three adsorbents were tested for each of three contaminants, making a total of nine testing conditions. Three trials were conducted; IR was measured twice for each experimental and control sample.

This plan represents 144 samples, with 288 measurements included in data analyses.

The Safe Drinking Water Act regulates standards, but it only applies to public water-treatment plants and not to private wells (“Safe Drinking Water Act”).

In the United States, more than 15 million households get their drinking water from private wells that are not treated or even monitored for safety (“Private Ground Water Wells”).Many things can contaminate water sources, but this project focused on herbicides, fertilizers, and fungicides, which enter surface water from urban and agricultural runoff and percolate into groundwater from farm irrigation and urban lawn watering (“Managing Stormwater Runoff”).Contaminants are documented at levels above accepted guidelines for safe drinking water (“Agricultural Chemicals”; “Understudied Fungicides”; “Study Confirms Glyphosate”; Biello), and may be carcinogenic or cause other problems for body systems (“Drinking Water Contaminants”).The index of refraction (IR) of a liquid is found by passing light through the sample and measuring the angle made when it hits the surface (Figure 1).The IR is specific for a solution, and increases as the concentration increases (the refractive index).By measuring IR for a series of prepared dilutions, a calibration curve can be created for a particular chemical, and the line’s equation calculated.The unknown concentration of other dilutions of that same chemical can be determined by measuring the sample’s IR and solving for concentration in that line’s equation: are constants for that line).Based on a literature review, the constant conditions were an approximate 2.5% contaminant concentration, a solid-to-liquid ratio of 20 g adsorbent to 1 L contaminant solution, and adsorbent particle sizes of 0.76 mm to 1.52 mm (Bungay; Armenante).All contaminant samples used a 20 m L starting volume.This work was the baseline from which I planned research studying how contaminant concentration is affected by batch adsorption.The research question is: Can agricultural waste be used to remove contaminants from water?