(Sylvania, OH) A Sylvania high school senior may already have the solution to Toledo's toxic algae blooms.
Northview high school senior Erika Chen already has her theory and testing published in the Environmental Research journal and a patent pending in China on her intellectual property, where she conducted her research.
Chen asks the question-- what if there were floating tanks powered by solar panels that sucked in the polluted river and lake water, treated it with U-V radiation, cleaning up the algae blooms, and then safely returned the cleaner water to the river or lake? In more technical terms, the purpose of her research served to quantify the reduction rate of algal concentrations under varying intensities of UV radiation.
Her testing worked and the hope is to someday take the models she constructed and used in her study and employ them in future water treatment systems.