As human activities intensify, the demand for improved water purification technologies increases. Currently, unwanted pharmaceuticals often contaminate effluents from municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), which then enter drinking sources and aquatic environments. I investigated the transport of pharmaceuticals during water treatment techniques such as reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, and electrodialysis while modeling their technoeconomic feasibilities as an undergraduate researcher in MIT's Rohsenow Kendall Heat Transfer Lab.
Constructed electrodialysis experimental cell stack. Electrodialysis is a separation process that utilizes an anode-cathode pair to generate a driving force, which then transports ions through multiple layers of alternating anion- and cation-exchange membranes.
Measured experimental samples within a wet-lab environment using techniques such as Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) and Ion Chromatography (IC) to quantify ion concentrations, and Liquid Chromatography (LC) and Mass Spectrometry (MS) to measure pharmaceutical concentrations.
Modeled treatment plant-scaled techno-economics of reverse osmosis, nanofiltration, and electrodialysis based off of experimental data using techniques such as nonlinear extrapolation and multi-stage goal-seeking. Used Python packages such as Pandas, SciPy, and MatPlotLib.
Findings calculated from my technoeconomic model were acknowledged within my advisor's thesis, and will be included in a publication that is currently in its final stage. Check back soon for more detailed results once our findings are published!