Roots Enmeshed in Waste Materials Can Purify Dirty Water
Penn State horticulturist Robert Cameron stands in front of a biofilter that uses plants roots, waste materials and bacterial colonies to clean wastewater as it trickles down the pipes. (Amitabh Avasthi)
Plant roots enmeshed in layers of discarded materials inside upright pipes can purify dirty water from a washing machine, making it fit for growing vegetables and flushing toilets, according to Penn State horticulturists.
“Our global fresh water supplies are fast depleting,” said Robert D. Cameron, doctoral student in horticulture. “So it is critical that we begin to look at alternatives on how we can take wastewater and turn it into a resource.”
Cameron and Robert D. Berghage, associate professor of horticulture, use discarded materials and a combination of plant and bacterial communities to treat water from a washing machine and other wastewater.
According to Cameron, this design is superior to previous living treatment systems in that it requires much less space and is much more efficient at removing contaminants.
“We have shown that with this system we can take wastewater from a washing machine and remove more than 90 percent of the pollutants within three days,” said Cameron. “The treated water had very low levels of suspended solids and no detectable levels of e.coli.”
Cameron presented the work today (May 5) at a meeting on organic and sustainable agriculture in Havana.
The water treatment system consists of two seven-foot long plastic corrugated pipes a foot in diameter. The researchers placed these pipes upright three feet apart in a basin containing a foot of potting soil and crushed limestone. (more…)
‘World’s Most Useful Tree’ Provides Low-Cost Water Purification Method for Developing World
Standing by the Moringa oleifera trees.
A low-cost water purification technique published in Current Protocols in Microbiology could help drastically reduce the incidence of waterborne disease in the developing world. The procedure, which uses seeds from the Moringa oleifera tree, can produce a 90.00% to 99.99% bacterial reduction in previously untreated water, and has been made free to download as part of access programs under John Wiley & Sons’ Corporate Citizenship Initiative.
A billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are estimated to rely on untreated surface water sources for their daily water needs. Of these, some two million are thought to die from diseases caught from contaminated water every year, with the majority of these deaths occurring among children under five years of age. Michael Lea, a Current Protocols author and a researcher at Clearinghouse, a Canadian organisation dedicated to investigating and implementing low-cost water purification technologies, believes the Moringa oleifera tree could go a long way to providing a solution.
“Moringa oleifera is a vegetable tree which is grown in Africa, Central and South America, the Indian subcontinent, and South East Asia. It could be considered to be one of the world’s most useful trees,” said Lea. “Not only is it drought resistant, it also yields cooking and lighting oil, soil fertilizer, as well as highly nutritious food in the form of its pods, leaves, seeds and flowers. Perhaps most importantly, its seeds can be used to purify drinking water at virtually no cost.” (more…)
Nanotechnology Offers Less Costly Water Desalination Process
Olgica Bakajin, part of the Livermore team who created membranes made of carbon nanotubes.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has exclusively licensed to Porifera Inc. of Hayward a carbon nanotube technology that can be used to desalinate water and can be applied to other liquid based separations.
Carbon nanotubes — special molecules made of carbon atoms in a unique arrangement -allow liquids and gases to rapidly flow through, while the tiny pore size can block larger molecules, offering a cheaper way to remove salt from water.
“The technology is very exciting,” said Olgica Bakajin, who serves as chief technology officer of Porifera. “It’s at the right place to take it to the marketplace.”
Bakajin formerly worked at LLNL where she was recruited in 2000 as a Lawrence Fellow and then moved on to become chief scientist on the carbon nanotube project along with LLNL chemist Aleksandr Noy, another former Lawrence Fellow. The license was awarded through LLNL’s Industrial Partnership Office. (more…)
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