Booth Id:
MCRO066
Category:
Microbiology
Year:
2021
Finalist Names:
Belyaev, Ivan (School: New Mexico Military Institute)
Lee, Jaejoon (School: New Mexico Military Institute)
Yeom, Kyunghoon (School: New Mexico Military Institute)
Abstract:
The use of hand sanitizers, a variety of disinfectants, and medical masks have exponentially increased because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dangerous threats the virus has imposed on everyone in the world have motivated our team to address this unfortunate situation by utilizing the resources provided by the state of New Mexico. We acquired locally grown cactus and pecan shells. We used various methods (specified below) to combine the two ingredients to create a hand sanitizer. Then, we applied it to three types of bacteria (Escherichia Coli, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Bacillus cereus) to test its anti-bacterial effectiveness. We also decided that we should broaden our choice of bacteria, and we chose to use K. Pneumoniae. In addition to this, we used commercial hand sanitizers given to us to compare our results with them. In order to have a general idea of the phenolic content of each compound, we first separated the dehydrated cactus and the dry pecan shells into two groups. Then, we ground both compounds separately until both were extremely fine powders and then we separated them into eight dishes equally: four dishes for the fine pecan powder and four dishes for the dry cactus powder. Afterward, we added four different extracting reagents (methanol, ethanol, hexane, and isopropanol) and added 30 ml of each reagent to a separate dish. Based on the result, isopropanol showed as the most phenolic compound out of the four reagents. Lastly, we added a boiled extract of oakwood as we discovered during the Soviet era, people used oak bark for the antimicrobial and antifungal properties. Our experimental data indicated that the anti-pathogenic capabilities of our all-natural hand sanitizer were equal to or more effective than commercial hand sanitizers.