Philippines

Best Impact of Research

Durian Peelings As Biofilter

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Students:

Mohammad Bin Abdulaziz Usman
Jr
Mark Chiron Cortez

Philippine Science High School Mindanao Campus, Philippines

Teachers:

Jan Mellrick Dugenio

Top Qualities

Students were inspired by an issue at their school, which made it easier for them to understand the problem and conduct experiments.
By identifying the potential of their project’s finding for other situations and countries, the students could demonstrate the impact of their research.

How did you choose your topic?

“Our school has a small pond filled with Koi fish with an array of colors that can catch anybody’s eye but fish there were dying due to the poor state of the pond. So now – How do we clean the pond so that we can give the fish a more suitable environment? With help from our teacher we found that biofiltration can reduce ammonia levels in the water, while also learning that ammonia in high levels is dangerous to the fish. Along the way we have found that the durian husk is being discarded in high amounts in Southeast Asia, with this we wanted give use to it by using its fibers to filter our school’s pond water. Boom! Two birds, one stone.”

What were your primary ways of collecting research? Please distinguish between primary research and secondary sources.

“1. In finding a way to incorporate the durian husk for the filtration we had help from secondary sources, that being our teacher and advisers paired with careful reading from sources of the internet.

2. Our primary way was testing the capabilities of the husk’s fiber on having an actual and significant effect on lowering the levels of ammonia water; after a week of filtration we collected samples and subjected them to NH3 test kits then compared its results with the results of the school’s pond and the samples obtained from the water filtered by the commercial bio ball.”

What is the most important discovery from your project?

“Based on the results, the fibers obtained from the durian’s husk that were used as the filter media for an improvised bio ball proved to decrease the ammonia and pH level of the pond water lower than that of the commercial bioball, all of this despite being an alternative. We could say that this could be used as basis for further studies on the fiber’s potential in filtering pond water.”