Silver and copper nanoparticles help filtrate contaminated water.
Scientists at the pAge Drinking Paper have proven that a drinkable book can purify highly contaminated water. Their new invention was presented during the most recent conference of the American Chemical Society in Boston.
After decades of researches and experiments, scientists have finally managed to come up with a solution for Africa’s poor water resources. According to her most recent presentation, Prof. Theresa Dankovich from the Carnegie Mellon University has created a drinkable book, whose pages act as highly efficient, yet incredibly low-cost water filters.
Dankovich has explained that the paper pages can clean contaminated water due to the silver and copper quantities they contain. These metals have long been acknowledged as the best cleaning materials, but nobody used them this way before.
Based on the experiments they have conducted, researchers have concluded that one single page from the drinkable book can filter up to 100 liters of water. The entire book can provide users with enough water to last them for four years.
Theresa Dankovich reassured participants at the conference in Boston that the book has been thoroughly tested on many occasions. Researchers did not want the drinkable book to be tested only on artificially contaminated water that has been created in their labs. For that matter, they have conducted many of their experiments on the highly polluted waters of Ghana.
Inhabitants in the region have directed them towards one of the dirtiest ditch in the area and researchers set out to discover whether the silver and copper-based pages could work their magic or not. They have removed various pages from the book and placed them on top of regular funnels. The outcome was really impressive.
99.9% of the impurities have been eliminated with the help of the new filtering paper, scientists have concluded. They have also analyzed the quantities of silver and copper nanoparticles as some of them have leaked into the filtered water. Even so, figures indicated that amounts were too small to be harmful to consumers.
The science community has been very impressed with the new technology that researchers at the University of Carnegie Mellon have discovered. They believe many of world’s problems could be solved thanks to the low-cost drinkable book. As a result, they are now working to create a commercial home filter using the same principles and techniques.
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