Low Cost Paper-Based Method to Purify Drinking Water

The “drinkable book”, developed by Carnegie Mellon University postdoctoral researcher Dr. Teri Dankovich, uses treated pages that contain nanoparticles of silver or copper, which kill bacteria in water as it filters through.

Scientists have developed an low-priced “drinkable book” with bacteria-killing metal nanoparticles to clean contaminated water. It solves the huge problem of bacterially contaminated water.

Theresa Dankovich, Ph.D., while studying material properties of paper as a graduate student, developed a novel way that is not only cheap and simple but easily transportable nanotechnology-based method to purify drinking water.

One single page of the book can clean up to 26 gallons of murky, microbe-filled water up to 99.9% purity, which is actually the average percentage of drinking water in the United States.

The field trial results were presented at the 250th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

“It’s really exciting to see that not only can this paper work in lab models, but it also has shown success with real water sources that people are using”, she said.

“One day, whereas we have been filtering flippantly contaminated water from an irrigation canal, close by staff directed us to a ditch subsequent to an elementary faculty, the place uncooked sewage had been dumped. We found millions of bacteria; it was a challenging sample”, Dankovich noted.

“Some silver and copper will leach from the nanoparticle-coated paper, but the amount lost into the water is within minimal values and well below Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organisation drinking water limits for metals”.

Since then, she’s started her own company and teamed up with the nonprofit WATERisLIFE organization and Brian Gartside, a designer formerly with DDB New York. Printed on each page is information on water safety both in English and the language spoken by those living where the filter is to be used.

According to the researcher, each page of the book can be removed to slide into a device where unpurified water can be transferred through and purified. During her down time, Mariel loves spending time at the beach, sailing, water skiing, and just hanging out with her best friend, a yellow Labrador named Hailey.Mariel is a well-known philanthropist and has served on many boards for some of the top hospitals in the country.