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Catherine Chen is a rising senior at Manhasset High School with a passion for environmental engineering. With both parents working in the textile industry, she became aware from a young age of the environmental impact of dye pollution, motivating her to pursue sustainable solutions. She is also a National Earth Science Olympiad top 40 finalist, a double bass student at Juilliard Pre-College, and the creator of Alzheimer’s Companion, an app with over 1,000 downloads designed to help children support Alzheimer’s care. Catherine hopes to continue developing innovative technologies that address critical environmental challenges.
Tell us what the water concern in your country is!A key concern in the U.S. is resource overuse and emerging textile dye pollution which is caused by fast fashion and outdated water systems. Heavy chemicals and energy use depletes resources causing future generations to suffer. Current treatment methods address pollution but also creates new environmental challenges.
This is what I think is one of the solutions for a sustainable future:A solution is circular water economy, where wastewater can be reused. Using affordable, biodegradable materials can reduce energy and chemical consumption while also protecting water resources. Water treatment methods need to not only be effective but also consider the longterm impacts on resource scarcity and environmental health for future generations.
"Integrated In Vitro and In Silico Approaches for Hydrogel-Based Dye Adsorption: Synthesis, Characterization, and Implementation of a Novel 3D-Printed Wastewater Filtration System"
The textile industry has more than doubled from 2020 to 2024, disrupting ecosystems. Current remediation methods like coagulation-flocculation are energy-intensive and costly. Biodegradable hydrogels, with hydrophilic functional groups and porous structures, offer a sustainable alternative. This study optimized hydrogel-based dye remediation of Methylene blue (MB) and Methyl Orange (MO) using computational and experimental approaches. To predict the hydrogel-dye interactions at a molecular level, computational simulations (Avogadro, Auto Dock Vina, ORCA) screened 30 hydrogels based on their binding energies, identifying four promising hydrogels (beaded, emulsion templating, dual crosslinking, and CH/GG/CR). They were tested for physical properties, dye adsorption, dye desorption/reusability, surface charges, temperature stability, functional groups, and biotoxicity. A novel self-cleaning 3D-printed column was developed to enhance dye adsorption efficiency by…