The results are reported in a paper written for MIT Sea Grant earlier this year by Ms. Murcott and Professor Harleman. PAH results showed that chitosan is effective as a coagulant aid in removing PAHs, but tests on its effectiveness as a primary coagulant were inconclusive. Over the summer Ms. Murcott also looked at the effectiveness of other natural materials for use in CEPT, including ground-up acorns, almonds, and seeds of several species of the tropical tree Moringa. Two species of Moringa worked well. The effectiveness of Moringa seeds also has another benefit.
Moringa species are very abundant in Africa and India.
The above results from Ms. Murcott's work over the summer are reported in a second paper completed this month for Sea Grant. The work could help Massachusetts municipalities like Cambridge, Reading and Weymouth that currently treat their water. It could also be of use to the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, or MWRA, which will be building a large water-treatment facility at Wachusett Reservoir to treat drinking water for the Greater Boston area. As a result, she said, the sludge resulting from this process contains a great deal of alum. And in preparing for the new federal regulations described earlier, the MWRA will no longer allow plants to pump their alum-laden sludge into the MWRA system.