USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)

First Advisor

Henry Alegria, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Manoj K. Ram, Ph.D.

Third Advisor

Kathy Carvalho-Knighton, Ph.D.

Fourth Advisor

Madhu Pandey, Ph.D.

Publisher

University of South Florida St. Petersburg

ISSN

2572-4339

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2015

Date Issued

October 21, 2015

Abstract

Over the years, the use of TiO2 in photocatalytic water treatment technologies has been well documented, along with various efforts to enhance its photoresponse to include visible light absorption. For this study, a nanocomposite of TiO2 and graphene was used to enhance the photocatalytic inactivation of the indicator bacteria, E.coli. Factors affecting the treatment such as light intensity, temperature, G-TiO2 concentration, and water composition were examined. Experiments were conducted using 100 ml of ultrapure water inoculated with initial E.coli concentrations of 1.0 x 104 – 1.0 x 105 CFU/ml, and exposed to various intensities of visible light for 120 minutes. Results showed that using 0.020±0.001 grams G-TiO2 in combination with the light source effectively inactivated the E.coli in the water samples within the 120-minute treatment time. In addition, results indicated that bacteria regrowth from the treated water do not occur at least three days after treatment.

Comments

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Department of Environmental Science and Policy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Saint Petersburg.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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