Imtiaz Karim's Individual Contribution Page

Fall 2013 Contributions

Beginning of Semester:

I began working on the arsenic treatment issue since the end of the Fall 2012 semester and have been working on it since. Over the past two semesters the teams which I have worked with were looking at how we could integrate an arsenic removal process into AguaClara technologies. Last semester was where a lot of headway was made in research and in creating protocols for the laboratory testing that will be done this semester. We hope that by the end of this semester the Arsenic team will have a dedicated lab space set up for continued arsenic removal research, have our detection methods refined, and to narrow down our treatment options through experimentation. 

Middle of Semester:

So far this semester the team and I have gathered our required materials to begin testing. We still have a few more chemicals to acquire, but then we can start looking at arsenic removal methods. We have also refined our testing procedure, but we wont know about the pitfalls we will encounter until we actually begin testing. 

End of Semester:

The GFAAS (Graphite Furnace Atomic Adsorption Spectrometer) was being updated for arsenic measurement throughout the semester. It is very close to being fully operational, but there are still some small pieces which need repair. Once these parts are fixed our team will be able to evaluate whether or not our process is removing arsenic out of our test groundwater. In the meantime, we have been testing our procedure using small concentrations of clay to see if our small scale testing procedure works. We have added 5 NTU to our test groundwater to see whether or not we get particle removal and we may also be adding similar clay concentrations in the future. The hope is that the clay will aid in the binding of arsenic and then the clay-arsenic complex will get picked up by the coagulant. Next semester should be even more exciting as our machine should be up and running and we can start tweaking our process to get the best arsenic removal we can.