London: An Indian-origin scientist led team has developed "super sand", a cheap and novel material which they say could clean contaminated water much more effectively.
The special sand which is coated with an oxide of graphite, commonly used as lead in pencils, could become a low-cost way to purify water in the developing world, the researchers said.
improved sources of drinking-water."
The graphite-coated sand grains might be a solution, especially as people have already used sand to purify water since ancient times, the BBC New reported.
Professor Pulickel Ajayan, of Rice University, who led the study, said it was possible to modify the graphite oxide in order to make it more selective and sensitive to certain pollutants, such as organic contaminants or specific metals
in dirty water. But ordinary sand, filtering techniques can be tricky, said the researchers who detailed their study in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.
Study co-author Dr Wei Gao said regular coarse sand was a lot less effective than fine sand when water was contaminated with pathogens, organic contaminants and heavy metal ions. While fine sand is slightly better, water drains through it very slowly.
"Our product combines coarse sand with functional carbon material that could offer higher retention for those pollutants, and at the same time gives good throughput," she explained.
Comments
0 comment