Health News

Tiny Device Uses Solar Energy To Produce Clean Water

Photo from Jin Xie, Stanford University

Water is one of the most essential things to sustain life, specifically, clean drinking water. While developed countries might not have much of a problem getting clean water daily, over 2.8 billion people elsewhere in the world suffer from a lack of it.

A minuscule device from scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator at Stanford University just may help change that.

The postage stamp-sized gadget uses solar energy to disinfect water up off bacteria up to 99.99%, according to The Verge. While the concept isn’t new — UV rays begin killing bacteria after six hours — the process can take a long time, up to 48 hours. This device speeds things up by not only using UV rays but also the visible portion of the solar spectrum to get rid of bacteria in water.

In an initiative to find more efficient ways to purify water, researcher Yi Cui and a team developed the nanostructure gadget. This water purifier is made of glass and invisible layers of molybdenum disulfide. This is a compound that becomes a catalyst, producing hydrogen peroxide when visible light hits it, which in turn kills harmful bacteria.

Chong Liu, lead author on the study, describes the device as “a little rectangle of black glass.”

They just put it in the water, he says, and the sun did the rest.

When tested, the device could kill bacteria in 25 milliliters of water after just 20 minutes of use. Cui does admit that the device needs more research and development to further test its viability.

One limitation of this study was that the device was only tested on small volumes of water and three bacteria strains, which means the water was not as contaminated as real-world water would be.

Cui remains positive about their invention, however, saying that, “It really works.”

The results of this study were published in Nature Nanotechnology.

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