UK Savants Develop Cheap, Simple Water Disinfection Process

Clean, disinfected water is essential for a good life, but millions of people around the world lack access to it.

Researchers at the Cardiff University plan to change this state of affairs with an on-site disinfection approach that is massively more efficient than our current disinfection approaches. The method relies only on atmospheric hydrogen, oxygen, and a gold-palladium catalyst, Alexandru Micu reported for ZME Science.

The new method aims to provide clean, safe water for consumption and hygiene in areas without access to such resources or reliable disinfection methods. All in all, it could help improve life for billions of people who are struggling with lack of water or water insecurity.

“The significantly enhanced [anti-viral and anti-bacterial] activities achieved when reacting hydrogen and oxygen using our catalyst, rather than using commercial hydrogen peroxide or chlorination, shows the potential for revolutionizing water disinfection technologies around the world,” says Professor Graham Hutchings, Regius Professor of Chemistry at the Cardiff Catalysis Institute, co-author of the paper.

First off, their method proved to be the most effective, being 10,000,000 times more potent at killing the bacteria per unit of volume than hydrogen peroxide, and over 100,000,000 times more effective than chlorine per unit of volume. It also killed the bacteria faster than either of the two other methods.

Its secret seems to be that the reaction which creates the hydrogen peroxide also produces reactive oxygen species (ROS), highly reactive compounds that bind to other chemicals, degrading them in the process. Bacteria are also made of chemicals — hence, they’re also being degraded.

This process is the same one that makes us grow “old” with age. Interestingly enough, the team found that these ROSs are what’s killing the bacteria and other pathogens, not the hydrogen peroxide itself.

The team notes that an estimated 785 million people around the world lack access to water, and around 2.7 billion experience water scarcity for at least one month every year. Inadequate sanitation, which is also powered by a lack of clean water, affects a further 2.4 billion people worldwide and can lead to a host of water-borne illnesses

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