Ithaca College

The Chemistry Department Postdoctoral Scholar Alexandre Pinto and the Chemistry major students Julian Kellner-Rogers (BS‘ 20) and Jeffrey Taylor (BS ‘ 19) published a paper entitled: “Kinetic and thermodynamic study of methylene blue adsorption onto chitosan: insights about metachromasy occurrence on wastewater remediation” in the peer-reviewed journal “Energy, Ecology, and Environment”.

This paper presents the results about the application of the biopolymer chitosan as a possible decontaminant agent for water contaminated by textile and food dyes.

“This research is essential to provide us quantitative data to understand how the dye contaminating water interacts with the surface of chitosan and which experimental conditions are optimum to promote this interaction” – says Alex Pinto, who first had to perform the experiments presented in the paper. “It also gives the opportunity to the students to apply in a research related situation the concepts they learned during the Physical Chemistry courses they took as part of the Chemistry major” – completes Alex.

The research described in the paper is the result of work started by Julian during the 2017-2018 academic year and finalized by Jeffrey during the Summer 2018, both students under Alex Pinto mentorship. Other collaborators in the paper were Professor Dr. Nirupam Aich, from University of Buffalo, and his graduate student Arvid Masud.

The paper can be visualized for free in the link below: https://rdcu.be/bsXS2

Picture (caption): From left to right: Julian Kellner-Rogers (Chemistry BS’20), Alex Pinto (Postdoctoral Scholar and Chemistry Faculty), and Jeff Taylor (Chemistry BS’19) standing in the Department of Chemistry lab where the experiments of the paper were performed.