The fourth national water conference was held on the 18th of October 2019 at the Institute of Applied Sciences within MCAST.
The conference provided an opportunity to showcase the ongoing local developments within the field of water research. The conference was well attended, with the core audience being students interested in furthering their knowledge of water science. The Micro WatTS team gave four presentations to introduce the project and to keep the audience abreast with the research activities being carried out as part of the project.
Dr Ing Stephen Abela from the University of Malta gave an overview of the project, highlighting the need for water reuse in islands such as Malta and Sicily, where water scarcity is a topic of major concern. He went on to describe the phenomenon of photocatalysis and how it will be used in order to treat greywater in households for its subsequent reuse.
A more in depth look into some of the materials developed for the project was provided by Dr Alessandro Di Mauro from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR). His presentation titled ‘Novel Synthesis of ZnO/polymer Nanocomposites: Application in Water treatment’ described the cutting-edge technique of atomic deposition as a flexible tool to produce the photocatalysts. This synthetic approach allows for the deposition of nanometric particles on a host of substrates including glass and polymers. The activity of these materials towards the degradation of pollutants in water was also discussed.
Dr Frederick Lia from MCAST spoke about electron transfer based methods for the determination of titanium dioxide doped surfaces. He described a rapid testing method to assess the activity of the different photocatalysts.
The session was concluded by Dr Maria Antonietta Buccheri from Universita` degli Studi di Catania, with a presentation titled ‘Allies in Water Purification: An Analysis of Antibacterial activity of ZnO Based Nanomaterials’. She discussed the role of different substrates on the activity of the catalysts produced by CNR where polymers show great promise for industrial use.