Engineered Hydroponic System for Methylne Blue Rhizodegration

Methylene Blue is one of many thiazine dyes in the textile industry that end up being in wastewaters, posing a pressing issue to humans and aquatic life. The plan is to move beyond small scale benchwork to design a system that tracks MB through RGB values cost effectively using Arduino, while researching if pH shifts allows for better plant health and remediation through the kinetic model of the pseudo second order. Because pH and molecular interactions affect bioremediation speed and outcome greatly, utilizing pH shifts with plant health in mind could result in a more healthy and cost effective system.

More scientific reasoning + details

Compared to physical and chemical remediation, bioremediation produces non-toxic byproducts through their metabolic pathways.

Duckweed has shown respectively a large success in dye removal, from Methylene Blue to Congo Red. There is a lack of knowledge of the process alongside vermicompost. A neutral to alkaline pH substance with a large biome of microorganisms that also works to degrade contaminants. Though bioreactors and other systems exist, this hopes to provide accessibility to ease data acquisition, and affordability through an engineered system that can test the compatibility of substances for future optimization.

By utilizing an engineered Arduino system that collects remediation environmental data, will it optimize the remediation of the contaminated site through a better managed system