Clean drinking water is crucial for the health and wellbeing of people across the globe. Now, researchers have created a simple water filter that could revolutionize the way people can access clean drinking water. They've created a simple filter by peeling the bark off of a small section of white pine, then inserting and securing it within plastic tubing.
"There is a community of people who do look at sap flow and drying in plants because it's obviously important, but that community doesn't intersect with the water purification community," said Rohit Karnik, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an interview with Boston.com. "They are thinking about how plants work and not how we can use plants to accomplish something else."
Xylem tissue in plants can draw up and filter water. This, in particular, is extremely useful; creating manmade membranes that can filter bacteria out of water is relatively easy, but not very cheap, according to NPR. That's why researchers turned to the xylem in plants in order to have a ready-made filter to use.
The researchers sent a stream of water containing tiny particles through a wood filter within a lab. In the end, the filter was able to remove the particles in the water. In fact, Karnik estimated that about 99.9 percent of the bacteria was removed with the help of the xylem, according to NPR.
"We would like to see this developed further, so we are seeking funding to develop this into filtration devices," said Karnik in an interview with Boston.com. "We did not file for a patent. I just felt one shouldn't patent something that's so universal, but I think that how do we process xylem or how do we make filters out of it--that's where I think there's a lot of potential to develop this technology."
The study was published in the journal PLOS One.
