Sustainable Water Purification Via Moringa-Coated Fibers

This poster will show how the seeds of the Moringa oleifera tree can be used as a low-cost sustainable solution for removing chemical contaminants from water. Moringa oleifera is a fast-growing, drought-resistant tree that thrives in tropic and subtropic regions. Many of the regions where moringa trees are prevalent also struggle with contaminated water. Moringa seeds contain two cationic antimicrobial proteins that will adsorb to naturally occurring fibers like cotton, reversing the charge of the surface. Moringa-coated cotton has previously been shown to remove bacteria and viruses. In our work, we explored the use of this filter for the removal of chemicals. We initially researched the removal of humic acid and showed that moringa-coated cotton was able to remove 2.3 mg of humic acid per gram of cotton. The success from the humic acid removal led us to research Red Dye 40 removal, which is another small molecule that is present in contaminated water. Purification via moringa-coated cotton was also successful in removing Red Dye 40. We found that moringa-coated cotton was able to adsorb a maximum of 2.0 mg of dye per gram of cotton. We will also report on the desorption of the humic acid and dye from various salt concentrations. Going forward, we are looking to conduct experiments on a scale-up removal of Red Dye 40 to see how this process can be conducted on a larger scale. We are also exploring the removal of Rit dye via the same method as humic acid and Red Dye 40. While many solutions like distillation, reverse osmosis, and UV filtration are very expensive, Moringa oleifera seeds provide a cheap and sustainable way to filter out the unwanted chemicals.