Week 1 -- Context, Literature Review and Initial Tests

In this senior project, I will be investigating the effect of testing a photocatalyst made of copper, an abundant metal in the Earth’s crust, and chitosan, a deacylated (acetate groups removed) derivative of chitin, which is found easily in crustacean shells in different ocean conditions, namely, pH, hardness, and alkalinity. As the ocean’s dynamics continue to change (I have done data collection on these variables in tide pools two summers ago), the efficiency of such catalysts decrease. If students have taken Honors or AP Chemistry, they’d know that catalysts often work in an ideal pH or temperature range. If the environment is too extreme, the catalyst’s efficiency drastically decreases. Therefore, I am doing this experiment to see if this cheap and abundant photocatalyst (Cu-CS complex) can be used across all these environments to successfully degrade a simulated pollutant (Methylene Blue).

As a student who has taken Honors, AP and Inorganic Chemistry, I am fluent in all lab techniques and procedures, such as vacuum filtration and titrations, all of which are required in a lab. Furthermore, this project serves as an extension of my research with UCSD two summers ago, that dealt with heavy metal effect in bioluminescence. I would expect to see very high amounts of degradation in the control (DI water), as most literature reports this as about 90% degradation within 30 minutes. Across the other three, alkalinity, acidity and salinity, I’d expect to see the most neutral values to exhibit the highest amount of degradation (i.e. low alkalinity, low salinity, neutral pH), as this introduces the least number of external variables (i.e. Hydrogen ions and alkaline metal ions for acidity and alkalinity respectively), allowing for no inhibition of this process.