UC researcher treats water with visible light

For the project, Abdelraheem focuses on organic contaminants in water, like pharmaceuticals, personal care ingredients, hormones and pesticides.

“With dissolved contaminants like organics and inorganics, you don’t know what is there and it’s a very small amount. To deal with them, you need a very sophisticated technology,” said Abdelraheem.

Abdelraheem works with the catalyst titanium dioxide. Titanium dioxide is easily reproducible and has little to no effect on the environment. When light interacts with titanium dioxide in water, it creates highly active atoms that attack organic contaminants and convert them into nontoxic byproducts like water and carbon dioxide. 

“With this kind of treatment you can just use a solar light and the same catalysts every time, collect it and treat it again,” said Abdelraheem.

Abdelraheem has published 12 papers in advanced water treatment technologies and hopes for this to be his 13th. His passion stems from his experience in his home country, Egypt, a country with little rainfall and without money to pump aquifers or desalt water. To survive, Egypt must find innovative ways to use the little water it has.

Abdelraheem sees his light-treating process as one solution for Egypt and other arid African countries facing water problems.

“We’ve based our economy for a long time on water and agriculture, and now that we’re getting dry, a lot of problems coming up,” said Abdelraheem. “This is going to be a huge challenge for people in the future, and we need to focus on alternative and sustainable solutions.”