Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2004MO31B

Use of Excitation/Emission Matrix Fluorescence

Institute: Missouri
Year Established: 2004 Start Date: 2004-03-01 End Date: 2005-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $22,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $46,805

Principal Investigators: Baolin Deng, Baolin Deng

Abstract: Water contamination can come from different sources, including wastewater treatment effluent, landfill leachate, agricultural runoff, and a wide varieties of industrial sources. Identifying and differentiating these sources are needed to effectively manage the water pollution issues and enforce the environmental regulation. Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MoDNR) has been using fluorescence spectroscopy as a tool to identify waste sources in contaminated waters. The objective of this collaborative project between the University of Missouri-Columbia (UMC) and MoDNR is to establish a fluorescence excitation/emission matrix database for different types of water in the state of Missouri and develop a mathematical procedure/computer model to identify the source of unknown water samples. The research tasks include: (i) collections of substantial numbers of water samples from various known sources, (ii) analysis of water samples for excitation/emission spectra, and (iii) development of a mathematical/computer model that can be used to identify different sources of water. The model will be tested in terms of sensitivity analysis and potential applications for source identification. The proposed research provides information critical for fluorescence data interpretation and will directly contribute to MoDNRs effort on wastewater sources identification.