Chemistry Commons^™

Redox-Active Coordination Complexes For Small Molecule Activation With Environmental Applications, Hanalei Lewine

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Nitrate and nitrate are harmful pollutants resulting from the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture. The pyridinediimine ligand scaffold with a hemilabile pendant phosphine shows reactivity towards these species to selectively reduce them to NO on a mononitrosyl iron complex (MNIC). Experimental work is supported by DFT broken symmetry calculations.

Surface Oxygenation Of Biochar Through Ozonization For Dramatically Enhancing Cation Exchange Capacity, Matthew D. Huff, Sarah Marshall, Haitham A. Saeed, James Weifu Lee

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Background

Biochar cation exchange capacity (CEC) is a key property that is central to biochar environmental applications including the retention of soil nutrients in soil amendment and removal of certain pollutants in water-filtration applications.

Results

This study reports an innovative biochar-ozonization process that dramatically increases the CEC value of biochars by a factor of 2. The ozonized biochars also show great improvement on adsorption of methylene blue by as much as a factor of about 5. In this study, biochar samples treated with and without ozone were analyzed by means of pH and CEC assays, water field capacity measurement, elemental …

Degradation Of Chlorophenols In Swine Waste, Srilatha Gangula

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Naturally occurring plant derived phenols can be degraded through bacteria in swine waste. Chlorinated phenols, which are not naturally present in the environment, are toxic and generated from industrial activities as such petrochemical, pharmaceutical, plastic, rubber, pesticide, iron, steel, paper production, coal conversion, wood preserving, and cellulose bleaching. Large scale coal gasification and carbonization plants are another source of chlorinated phenols. Although not normally present in the environment, chlorinated phenols are structurally similar to many plant derived phenolics.

It is our hypothesis that bacteria located in swine wastes may also have the ability to degrade chlorinated phenols. Identifying situations (and …