Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Luster-Teasley, Stephanie Dr.

Abstract

The threat of biological agents being used to harm mass populations are of extreme importance in the 21st century. Pathogenic agents such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoan, and helminthes are of major concern in the wake that they can be used to cause death to anyone exposed. Agents like these can be disseminated by air, through water, or from animal, food, or human-to-human transmission. Controlled release methods are extensively used in the medical and agricultural industry to release chemicals at controlled rates for drug delivery in the human body or pesticide treatments for farming. Few researchers have investigated the use of controlled release methods for environmental engineering remediation. The objective of this research is to investigate the feasibility of designing a controlled release polymer (CRP) system to reduce pathogen levels in water bodies. A research group at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University is investigating the ability to encapsulate a chemical oxidant (chemox) within biodegradable polymers to treat water contaminated by pathogens.

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