Grantee Research Project Results
2022 Progress Report: One in a Billion: Living Filters for Arsenic Removal
EPA Grant Number: SV840018Title: One in a Billion: Living Filters for Arsenic Removal
Investigators: Colvin, Vicki L.
Institution: Brown University
EPA Project Officer: Aja, Hayley
Phase: II
Project Period: July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2022 (Extended to June 30, 2023)
Project Period Covered by this Report: July 1, 2021 through June 30,2022
Project Amount: $75,000
RFA: P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet - Phase 2 (2020) Recipients Lists
Research Category: P3 Awards
Objective:
Arsenic is a pervasive and toxic species in drinking water that has remained at the top of the EPA priority contaminants list for more than a decade. There is a need for more sustainable and more selective technology to remove trace levels of arsenic from drinking water. The overall objective of this project is to meet this need with a renewable treatment system that offered more sustainable and selective performance than current arsenic removal technologies. During Phase I research, we developed engineered bacteria, also referred to as a living filter, to selectively bioaccumulate trace levels of arsenic from drinking water. The primary goal for this Phase II research is to adapt the living filters to an inexpensive, simple treatment system with minimal power requirements and enable this technology to provide arsenic-free drinking water for rural households and small communities.
Progress Summary:
We continued to enhance and develop our engineered microbe for use in a drinking water setting. A major accomplishment for the past year was to evaluate the performance of living filters in different types of water and in the presence of interfering ions such as phosphate. We found that the performance was insensitive to input water conditions. Living filters were also compared directly to existing inorganic sorbents for Arsenic removal, such as Bayoxide. Their stoichiometric removal of arsenic at very low concentrations (< 10 ppb) as well as their insensitivity to water chemistry offers very substantial benefits. This year the team also completed quantitative characterization of a fully instrumented water treatment system that included a post-treatment hollow fiber membrane filter to lead to produced water.
Future Activities:
Our primary focus for the remaining time is the characterization of the composition of the produced water from living filters. Specifically, we will quantify the bacterial removal efficiency possible using conventional physical filtration as well as magnetic removal. For this evaluation we will use bacterial plate counting for assessing viable microbial contamination as well as a highly sensitive qPCR method (EPA Method 1603) to confirm that our methods for containing the living filters meet water quality needs.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 2 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
Water treatment, arsenic, groundwater, nanotechnology, biotechnologyProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractP3 Phase I:
Magnetic Nanocomposites for Water Remediation | Final ReportThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.