19 / 31
Notes:
Volume 2
Journal of Environmental Research
Page 34
JOINT EVENT
July 26-27, 2018 Rome, Italy
&
6
th
Edition of International Conference on
Water Pollution & Sewage Management
4
th
International Conference on
Pollution Control & Sustainable Environment
Biosynthesis & application of nanostructured composites for purification of drinking water
Emilly Obuya
1
and
Naumih Noah
2
1
The Sage Colleges, USA
2
United States International University, Kenya
W
ater pollution by microbial contamination that emanates from poor sanitation affects over 50% of the global population,
particularly in developing countries. Solar disinfection (SODIS) technique has emerged within the past decade as a
simple and low cost point-of-use water treatment technology. For bacterial inactivation, contaminated water is placed in plastic
bottles and exposed to direct sunlight for 6-48 hours. The limited quantity of water treated (2 L-bottles) and long illumination
duration makes the process cumbersome hence hampers large scale adoption. Additionally, due to the UV process of bacterial
deactivation, the SODIS technique is incapable of removing chemical contaminants from the drinking water thus limiting its
widespread use for efficient water treatment. In this work we have applied the green chemistry principles and nanotechnology
to design, synthesize, and develop a Ag-TiO
2
heterogeneous catalyst that will be used as an additive to improve the overall
efficiency of the SODIS technique. The silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) were biosynthesized from the rind extract of the
watermelon fruit, and loaded on the surface of titanium dioxide nanofibers (TiO
2
NFs) through a wet synthesis method. The
surface and electronic properties of the nanocomposite material will be optimized to control the size of the Ag NPs on the TiO
2
surface. The disk diffusion method will be used as a quantitative antimicrobial assay of the as-synthesized catalysts followed
by the time-kill method where photo-inactivation studies of the catalysts will be tested for their microbial activity against lab-
cultured
E. coli.
We will report the biosynthesis and characterization of silver nanomaterials and results from the disk diffusion
& time kill methods.
Biography
Emilly Obuya completed her PhD in Inorganic and Materials Chemistry from State University of New York in 2012 and is currently an Associate Professor of
Chemistry at The Sage Colleges in Troy, NY in USA. She is working on collaboration with Dr. Noah on the biosynthesis and application of nanostructured materials
for water purification.
obuyae@sage.eduEmilly Obuya et al., J Environ Res 2018, Volume: 2