Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi!

i just want to know for our project..
what are the chemical components of Morning Glory Plant??

Hoping for someone's reply.

thanks..

Hi lizette,
Can you be a little more specific? What sort of chemical compounds do you want to know about?

regards,
chris

Lizette:

Some morning glory varieties contain hallucinogens so be careful in your work.

A Google search using "chemical compounds in morning glory" will get you started.

Matt Mulanax

hi

if possible i want to know all of its chemical compound.

thanks.

Lizette:

Question - how does morning glory figure into bioremediation of liquid hospital waste?

Some plants are used to reclaim mine spoils, petroleum spills in oil fields, heavy metal contamination and pesticide spills.

Has morning glory or its relatives been used as in spill cleanup?

Matt Mulanax

Lizette, the complete list of chemical compounds in any plant or animal would be too long to list here, and would contain a lot of irrelevant information. Can you tell us why you are asking this question and how it relates to your project? We may be able to help you narrow down the scope of the question so that we can give you a reasonable answer or at least help you to find an answer.

hey lizette

according to http://www.wikipedia.com it says

The seeds of many species of morning glory contain d-lysergic acid amide, ergoline alkaloids better known as LSA. Seeds of I. violacea and R. corymbosa are used as hallucinogens. They are about 5% to 10% as potent as LSD. To discourage morning glory's use as hallucinogenic drugs, some commercial seed producers have started treating seeds with a chemical that will not wash off. This chemical has been known to cause vomiting, nausea and abdominal pain. Typically some form of a warning or notice is printed on the package if seeds have been treated.

well i want to know the chemical substances which morning glory contain so that i can determine whether there is a possibility for it to be used in our project,..

Lizette,

Your question is still too vague and impossible to answer. There are literally hundreds of thousands of different substances that can be found in plants in detecable quantities. As one of the experts has pointed out, the vast majority of them will be of no interest to you.

Your topic, Bioremediation on Liquid wastes of Hospitals, doesn't sound so much like you care about what componds are in morning glories but rather whether morning glories (or some other plant or organism) can metabolize hazardous hospital waste and turn it into something harmless.

Is that true? If so, google these keywords:

plants Bioremediation of Liquid wastes of hospitals

I note that you had another thread a few weeks ago where some tips were provided to you. Were they useful?

Hi Lizette,
The last I heard, you were interested in antibiotic resistant microbes. Is that still your main interest for this project? How would you plan to use a morning glory plant to reduce concentrations of those microbes in waste water? Are you wondering whether this plant or its extracts might have some antibiotic properties?

sir Chris,

i am still interested on the project. but i am really curious whether my project has the potential to be approved.
what can you suggest as an alternate for morning glory plant??

thanks.

good evening.

is bacillus have the potential to cleanse the diluted water from hospital??or liquid wate of hospital.as what i had red in some sites that this Bacillus thing can get rid with household odors, good cleaning surfactants and an oxygenating biocatalyst.so can there be a possibilty touse this thing??

Thanks for the future reply.

Lizette

Lizette,

You need to show us that you too have been doing some research, have found things out, and are working on a plan. You have posted in several places, but you never reply directly to the additional questions people have asked you in order to understand your project better and give you better answers.

In any case, I think you are mixing up two things that don't go together. One is cleansing liquid hospital waste of hazardous microorganisms, and the other is cleansing it of harmful chemicals. To cleanse it of harmful organisms, it might be enough to heat-sterilize it or do some kind of pasteurization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization) or flash pasteurization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_pasteurization), or some variant. I don't think this lends itself to a science fair project unless you have a lot of time and resources. Still, you may be able to do a project using UV germicidal irradiation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviole ... rradiation) if you have access to a strong UV light. CAUTION: UV LIGHT CAN CAUSE PERMANENT DAMAGE TO EYES AND EXPOSED AREAS OF YOUR BODY.

Removing hazardous compounds from wastewater using plants to my mind sounds more interesting and lends itself to a variety of science fair projects. If you remove the word "hospital" from your project name and think of ways to use plants to remove chemicals from any arbitrary kind of wastewater, you can design a project using a model system. This means you choose chemicals that are practical for you to test. The chemical(s) must be cheap, easily obtainable, not hazardous to you under the conditions of the experiment, and can be metabolized by a plant that you can easily obtain and grow within the time and resource limitations of your science fair project.

Perhaps even the idea of waste water can be changed into using plants to treat farmland that has too much salt and had to be abandoned. If you could research plants that could partly or completely remove salts from the soil, at least enough for useful crops to be harvested, then you would also have an interesting and socially useful project. Try this search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

If you are already committed to hospital wastes, you need to tell us, in this thread and without starting any additional threads, what specific things you want to remove from hospital wastewater. Also, you need to tell us where this wastewater is coming from. Is it being emitted by the hospital into the sewer system? Is it in metal drums? Is it in the plastic and paper items used to treat patients, such as in catheters, diapers, syringes, etc.? Is it the microorganims or the chemicals you want to eliminate?

Lizette,

Try this search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

The idea of "natural swimming pools" is to use plants to clean water and keep it clean enough to use safely as a swimming pool. This is vaguely similar to your bioremediation with plants (phytoremediation) idea.

Try also:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

Certain types of morning glory can remove heavy metals from the ground:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

Hospital wastewater (looks difficult!)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

Degrading or removing drugs from waste water:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

Similar science fair projects to give you ideas:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=& ... tnG=Search

yah the waste water is eliminated from sewer systems of the hospital. we want to get rid with the hazardous chemicals from the hospitals that can cause diseases in ones health because as far as i know this chemicals produces pathogenic bacterias.

Lizette,

Good, that starts narrowing it down. Now you need to do a bit more research and list the specific chemicals that you are talking about. Then, find plants or other organisms that can somehow destroy or neutralize one or more of the chemicals. You may not be able to deal with all of them, but you will probably be able to propose a project to deal with one of them, or a whole class of chemicals, such as antibiotics, heavy metals, or something else.

Do you have a list of hazardous chemicals in the wastewater, or a few specific ones you already know about? Does the wastewater pass through an open area where plants can leach things out of it? Does it go through a closed sewer? Is there a treatment facility?