More than a billion people lack access to safe drinking water. From nanotechnology-based purification systems to the portable LifeStraw, there are many innovations that could help end this terrible statistic. Most, however, require capital investment and some form of distribution infrastructure to bring them to scale.
A team of researchers at MIT, however, believe they may have come up with a novel solution: wood. Using little more than a sapling branch from a sapwood pine and some plastic tubing, the researchers peeled the bark off the wood, inserted some plastic tubing, secured it using a clamp and epoxy, and then used it to filter water. First the team simply tried filtering red food dye, with a good rate of success. Then, as MIT News reports, they tried getting a little dirtier:
Finally, the team flowed inactivated, E. coli-contaminated water through the wood filter. When they examined the xylem under a fluorescent microscope, they saw that bacteria had accumulated around pit membranes in the first few millimeters of the wood. Counting the bacterial cells in the filtered water, the researchers found that the sapwood was able to filter out more than 99 percent of E. coli from water.
The full research was published in the journal Plos One. Here's a very brief overview via GeoBeats News:
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