The Effect of Fruit Peels on Contaminated Water

[deleted-306793]

My project is The Effect of Fruit Peels on Contaminated Water. What I have found so far is that the carboxylic acid in fruit peels such as bananas, oranges, and apples can clean heavy metals in water like lead and copper. For my experiment I was planning on creating water with lead and copper and letting the peels soak for different amounts of time to see how they change the amount of metal. I hypothesis that the longer the peels remain in water, the more they will attract the heavy metals and get rid of them. The only part I got stuck on was how to create solution that has copper and lead in it and how do I test if the water was actually cleaned. I was hoping you could help me with that. Thank you.

[norman40]

Hi anokhi,

You have a very interesting project idea. It should be fun to experiment with using fruit peels to clean up water!

Because lead is very toxic, my suggestion is to conduct your project with copper only.

Copper sulfate is a good salt to use for your water solution. A small quantity is available online at the following link. But you will need to ask your teacher to order it for you.

http://www.carolina.com/stc-secondary-r ... ic+sulfate

There is a project on the Science Buddies website that tests the effects of copper levels in water on aquatic environments. The copper concentrations used in this project may be appropriate for your experiments as well. The project is described at the following link:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ml#summary

You may be able to use test strips like the ones shown in the links below to test your water samples for copper content.

http://www.carolina.com/environmental-s ... opper+test

http://www.carolina.com/environmental-s ... opper+test


I hope this helps. Please post again if you have more questions.

A. Norman

[deleted-306793]

Hi,
Thank you for responding. This really helped me. I had another question about how to create the solution. In the link you sent me (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure), there is a table that shows the ion concentration, and I was just wondering how they get those numbers. Thank you.

-Anokhi

[deleted-306793]

Hi,
Thank you for responding. This really helped me. I had another question about how to create the solution. In the link you sent me (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure), there is a table that shows the ion concentration, and I was just wondering how they get those numbers. Also, if I change the stock soultion to 1000 ppm, do the number of drops reduce by half to keep the same ppm? Thank you.

-Anokhi

[norman40]

Hello anokhi,

The concentrations shown on the right side of the table in the procedure are actually for copper sulfate and not copper ions as indicated on the table heading (this seems to be a misprint).

These concentrations were calculated by multiplying the stock concentration by the number of drops and by the volume of a drop (0.05 ml). This product is then divided by the solution volume (1000 ml). For example, the 0.1 ppm concentration comes from

(500 ppm) X (4 drops) X (0.05 ml/drop)/(1000 ml final volume).

There’s a more detailed description of the calculations in the background “tab” of the project.

If you use a stock solution of 1000 ppm, you would use half as many drops as shown in the table to make the same concentrations.

I hope this helps. Please post again if you have more questions.

A. Norman