Senior Design
Microplastic Collection
Microplastics are plastics that were degraded into tiny particles of less than 5 milimeters which can affect ecosystems and can enter the human body. These microplastics are mostly found in water which it can be a source of transportation of this pollutant.
Our senior design project is focused in innovating a system to collect microplastics from stormwater. We decided to focus on creating beads made out of Biochar and Sodium aliginate to increase the hydrophobicity of the beads and be able for the microplastic to get attach.
Senior Design
Leadership
The project was developed in sprints of two weeks where we performed task related to presentation, manuscrpits, and design of the microplastic collection system. During second sprint i had to take the lead of the group for two weeks in which i made a plan to address some problems with the design.
MANAGEMENT
I first divided the tasks into each one of the members of the group. From working on the presentation templet, review the final manuscript or focus on more research for a better performance of the materials. I also assigned other different task for the experimentation portion of the project so everybody could participate. I work with another student on coating the biochar with Sodium aliginate to make the beads while the rest worked on running the experiments with microplastics in water.
PROGRESS
We succesfully performed experiments with the biochar/Sodium aliginate beads. We were also able to finish the presentation template which we presented at the end of the sprint. The final manuscript was not finished but it we were able to made a lot of progress for the final submission later in the semester.
THINGS TO CONSIDER
The microplastics were not attaching to the beads meaning that we had to reconsider the use the coating process and study the hydrophobicity of microplastics as well as ways to impregnate the metal into the biochar more efficient.
Presentations
AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
I attended to the 269th National American Chemical Society Conference in San Diego, California to present my research about water remediation with Photoanode materials.
LSU DISCOVER DAY CONFERENCE
I also had the opportunity to repeat my presentation at the 2025 LSU Discover Day Conference.
