Yousef Okour (PhD Student)
University of Technology, Sydney

Project Title
Removal of persistent organic pollutants using Titania (TiO2) nanoparticles produce from sludge.

Biography
Yousef has completed a Master of Engineering from the University of Western Sydney (UWS), Australia, in April 2003. He graduated as B.Sc. Engineer (Chemical), in June 1997 from Jordan University of Science and Technology. He was involved in a range of project works during his under-graduate and post-graduate studies. Yousef worked as a chemical engineer at Al-Shara' chemical plant (1998-1999) and department of public statistics (environmental department) in Jordan.

Start Date
March 2009

Project Details
Aluminium sulfate and ferric chloride are the main coagulants in wastewater treatment plants. However, using these coagulants produces large quantities of sludge which inhibit efficient wastewater treatment. The use of Ti-salts as new coagulants is efficient and economical not only in terms of removal of organic matter, but also in sludge reduction. After flocculation, the settled floc will be incinerated to produce titanium dioxide (TiO2) which has the same quality as that of commercial TiO2.
In this study, the performance of titanium salts will be compared with ferric chloride and aluminium sulfate coagulants. TiO2 nanoparticles will be produced from the flocculated sludge and TiO2 nanotubes will be produced hydrothermally with alkaline solution using TiO2 nanoparticles.
TiO2 nanoparticles, TiO2 nanotubes and dye modified TiO2 nanoparticles and nanotubes will be used as photocatalysts to remove persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from wastewater. Every single organic pollutant might be decomposed at different rates by different TiO2 types. This will make the photocatalyst a substrate-selective product.