Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID NJ_2023_LI+ZHANG-ZHANG

Algal separation using recoverable magnetic particles under a tunable magnetic field

Institute: New Jersey
Year Established: 2023 Start Date: 2023-09-01 End Date: 2024-08-31
Total Federal Funds: $5,000 Total Non-Federal Funds: $5,000

Principal Investigators: Lili Li, Yihan Zhang, Wen Zhang

Project Summary: Harmful algal blooms are global water environment problem and its large area outbreak seriously affect the environment, ecosystems and human health. While traditional techniques such as centrifugation, sedimentation, flotation, membrane filtration, coagulation-flocculation have been developed for microalgae removal over the last four decades, they tend to be highly energyintensive (requiring 0.1-20 kWh per m3 of treated water) due to the small size of algal cells (typically 2‒30 μm in diameter) and relatively low concentrations (e.g., 0.5‒5 g-dry weight·L-1). To address this issue, this project proposes a sustainable and environmentally technique for algae remove through magnetophoretic separation of recyclable magnetic particles. The project will examine (1) the removal performance of different surface-coated magnetic particles; (2) the reaction mechanism between magnetic particles and algal cells; (3) the recovery of particles using alternating strong and weak magnetic fields. The results of this project may help us to have a more comprehensive understanding of magnetophoretic separation and pave the way for the sustainable prevention and control of harmful algal blooms.