{"id":5757,"date":"2015-08-19T09:52:21","date_gmt":"2015-08-19T09:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=5757"},"modified":"2015-08-19T09:52:21","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T09:52:21","slug":"books-pages-eliminating-bacteria-in-drinking-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/books-pages-eliminating-bacteria-in-drinking-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Book\u2019s Pages Eliminating Bacteria in Drinking Water"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Dankovich<\/a>
Dankovich pours contaminated pond water into a funnel containing an antimicrobial filter paper to obtain clean drinking water in a rural area of Bangladesh. (Image: Ali Wilson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now, the researchers have come up with a new innovation facilitating people of sub-Saharan\u00a0Africa with a book whose pages can filter water converting it into drinkable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At first glance, it looks like a normal book with a gray cover. But after one look inside, it is clear the thick orange pages contain something special. The pages of The Drinkable Book, as it\u2019s called, are embedded with silver nanoparticles and could provide enough clean drinking water for one person in a remote area for four years. It was invented by Theresa Dankovich, Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, and is able to filter contaminated water to 99.9 percent purity. At the American Chemical Society\u00a0(ACS) National Meeting and Expo in Boston on Sunday Dankovich reported the results of recent field studies done in Africa and Bangladesh.<\/span><\/p>\n

Silver nanoparticles eliminate a wide variety of microorganisms, including bacteria and some viruses.\u00a0 Copper nanoparticles, which are less expensive than silver, can also be used, but more is needed to achieve the same amount of purity, so in the end the copper and silver are comparable. Dankovich assured that while some silver and copper will seep from the nanoparticle-coated paper into the water, the amount is minimal and is well below metal limits put in place by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and World Health Organization (WHO).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are benefits to using paper as a filtration system, including that it\u2019s cheap and lightweight. The main cost comes not from the metals but the paper itself \u2013 which is still an inexpensive option.<\/span><\/p>\n

[pullquote]The Drinkable Book, as it\u2019s called, are embedded with silver nanoparticles and could provide enough clean drinking water for one person in a remote area for four years.\u00a0[\/pullquote]<\/p>\n

Each sheet of the book contains what is essentially two square filters, which can filter 100 liters of water each. At an ACS press conference Monday, Dankovich said that field testing showed the book is just as effective as other filtration methods out there. \u201cWe\u2019re aiming to have the price of this be less than 10 cents \u2013 or a penny if possible.\u201d\u00a0 She said that would make The Drinkable Book an option that can filter 10 times the amount of water at one-tenth the price of current coagulation-based filtration systems.<\/span><\/p>\n

The book also provides education on water filtration through a couple of written pages of text, both in English and the local language of the people using it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The system is easy to use.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople seem to be interested in the fact that it\u2019s a very simple thing,\u201d Dankovich said at the ACS press conference. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t involve pump, it\u2019s just pouring into a container.\u201d\u00a0 During her field studies, she said many people were excited to know when this might be available.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dankovich wants to do a much more in-depth study that involves health monitoring of people in villages using the filtration system and water quality monitoring. She would also like to develop an indicator system that informs people when it is time to change the filter.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next step is figuring out how to scale up production, and one challenge is getting a paper company on board.\u00a0 \u201cYou really need to convince them that it\u2019s worth their time,\u201d Dankovich said.\u00a0 Currently the pages are made by Dankovich and volunteers, who sometimes utilize a church kitchen which has large ovens, for the heating portion of the paper preparation. Dankovich\u2019s nonprofit company pAge drinking paper, works together with the nonprofit WATERisLIFE to produce the nanoparticle embedded paper.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Drinkable Book, as it\u2019s called, are embedded with silver nanoparticles and could provide enough clean drinking water for one person in a remote area for four years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5758,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",1718,2106,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook-244x300.jpg",244,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",750,919,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook-835x1024.jpg",750,920,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",1253,1536,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",1671,2048,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",653,800,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",465,570,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",600,736,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",489,600,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",400,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",294,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",53,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",640,785,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",78,96,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/NM250DrinkableBook.jpg",150,184,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Innovation<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}