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My name is Irene, I am 17 years old and I live in Novara, a city in Northern Italy. I am a chemistry student who likes to take part in scientific competitions. I like to spend my free time with my family, my friends and my boyfriend.
Taking part in these projects about saving water and green methods to clean it from pollutants makes me more aware of my surroundings.
As our project has shown, the surface water in our area is mainly contaminated with traces of pesticides. Finding an efficient way to remove dangerous pollutants from water to prevent its quality from deteriorating dramatically is one of the biggest challenges.
This is what I think is one of the solutions for a sustainable future:Using waste materials, such as rice husks, to make traps or filters to purify water, as an alternative to producing them from non-recyclable or otherwise environmentally unfriendly materials, can be a sustainable solution and an extra push towards a circular economy.
RAWTRAP : Nano-traps from rice ashes to purify water
The Rawtrap project was born from the need to address the important issue of water purification using waste materials from rice production. Specifically, it focuses on the use of rice husk, a waste material rich in silica. This allows us to synthesize nanoparticles called MCM-41 to create a molecular sieve capable of capturing pollutants. These nanoparticles are very chemically stable and resistant even at high temperatures. We have focused our research on the adsorption of a specific dye called Rhodamine B, primarily used in the textile industry.
