Professor Eid A. Alkhatib, Ph.D. is Proessor of Chemistry and Director of the Masters in Chemistry Program, and Program Director for Physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. His research interests and activities focus on two themes: (1) the impact of wet weather conditions on the resuspension and transport of pollutants in tributaries to drinking water reservoirs. My approach to this problem is two-fold: a) field sampling and analysis during rainfall events and b) simulating sediments resuspension during wet weather conditions in the lab using a particle entrainment simulator. Understanding resuspension and transport of pollutants during wet weather is a valuable tool to help water treatment authorities optimize water treatment processes, particularly in response to the impact of wet weather conditions on water resources. I applied my research on various pollutants including arsenic, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and trihalomethane precursors.

The second theme (2) treatment of water and wastewater using activated carbon. My approach to this problem is also two-fold: a) experimental evaluation of adsorption of specific organic contaminants on activated carbon using single and competitive adsorption models. In this area, my research emphasis was given to selected poly aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which are potential pollutants found in water and wastewater. Road runoff is considered one of the primary sources for these types of pollutants. Drinking water, parking lots and roads runoff are now regulated to the discharge of such compounds. In my future research I am currently focusing on the prediction of adsorption of aromatic hydrocarbons onto activated carbon using a docking algorithm in combination with semi-empirical PM3 calculations. This is a novel approach to predict the adsorption trends from the calculated enthalpy.