A crash course in changing the world.
While searching the Internet I came across a highly interesting project a team of engineers without borders of the University of Illinois started in order to help a Mayan community in Guatemala to filter their drinkin water at a very low cost level. As a basis the students used a biosand filtration system (BSFs). What makes the project so special is that they had to cope with the problem of extreme virus contamination of the water which cannot be solved with standard filter systems. Even though BSFs have been used effectively to strain out bacterial pathogens, protozoa, and helminthes from drinking water, viruses, which are a lot smaller than bacteria, slip through the filter. The students came up with a solution which first seems very unconventional but turned out to be highly effective while the additional costs tend to 0: Iron nails added to the BSF will rust, producing iron oxide and hydroxides. These positively charged oxides efficiently adsorb virus particles, removing them from the water. As the adsorption sites are filled, the iron oxides fall off the nails and expose new iron material, which rusts and creates new iron oxide adsorption sites to remove still more viruses. The process passively regenerates itself to indefinitely remove viruses. The iron oxides are caught in the sand once they fall off the nails and do not enter the filtered drinking water. A filtration system on this basis costs approx. $30 per household while being highly efficient. For me this project is an absolut breakthrough that could solve problems of millions of people in the world, giving them access to clean drinking water.
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