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A $200,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant is being used to support a multidisciplinary project focused on finding a cheaper method to remove the contaminant perchlorate from groundwater.
Funding began June 1 and will extend the research, which has been ongoing for a number of years, until May 2009.
The project requires collaboration across numerous academic departments and is being led by Javad Tavakoli, associate professor and head of chemical engineering; Arthur Kney, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering; Steve Mylon, assistant professor of chemistry; and Laurie Caslake, assistant professor of biology.
Perchlorate moves easily through groundwater and has been linked to certain cancers. It is used in the manufacturing of propellants such as rocket fuel, munitions, and fireworks. The Environmental Protection Agency has placed perchlorate on its Contaminant Candidate List, which means that it is a potential candidate for regulation.
According to Mylon, who wrote the grant proposal, a system has already been developed which removes perchlorate from groundwater, but it is expensive and only cost-effective with large scale contamination.
Perchlorate is removed from water through the use of an ion exchange resin. The chemical accumulates on the resin and the resin cannot be reused. Not only is the resin expensive, but this produces hazardous waste, which must be disposed of.
Lafayette’s team is working on a process that would destroy the chemical after it has been removed through the use of bacteria. This provides an affordable way for small communities to clean contaminated water because the resin can be reused and also produces no hazardous waste.
Not only will this project bring about a potential solution to an environmental problem, but it has also provided real world experiences for numerous students.
Last summer, three chemical engineering majors: Marquis Scholar Jessica Jenkins ’07 (Fayetteville, N.C.), Korin Kohen ’08 (Istanbul, Turkey), and Marquis Scholar Briana Hecht ’08 (Chestnut Hill, Mass.), helped develop some of the groundwork for the study through EXCEL research.
“EXCEL is vital to the project,” says Mylon. “Without students doing work, I don’t think this would have gotten off the ground. You have to have a certain amount of information in order to write up a grant and students were a big part of that.”
This summer, chemical engineering major Carolyn Stolfi ’09 (Chatham, N.J.), biochemistry major Hannah Fink’09 (Whitehall, Pa.), and biology major and Marquis Scholar Brian Kilmartin ’09 (Norristown, Pa.) are continuing the research. The EXCEL scholars will try to find what type of bacteria and resin will work best and help develop a system to marry the removal and destruction steps.
The research will continue over the next two summers with three more EXCEL students participating each year.
The first group of students presented its work to environmental biologists at a conference at Swarthmore College and at The Fifth International Conference on Remediation of Chlorinated and Recalcitrant Compounds in Monterrey, Calif. Mylon expects many more presentations and publications in the future.
“Without an engineering program like Lafayette’s, where there is close communication between departments, this wouldn’t become a project,” he says. “Organizations like NSF are looking for this kind of multidisciplinary project and the structure of the college facilitated this.”
In Lafayette’s distinctive EXCEL Scholars program, students conduct research with faculty while earning a stipend. The program has helped to make Lafayette a national leader in undergraduate research. Many of the more than 160 students who participate each year share their work through articles in academic journals and/or conference presentations.
As a national leader in undergraduate research, Lafayette sends one of the largest contingents to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research each year. Thirty-nine students were accepted to present their research at this year’s conference.