Purifying Water

Nano particles of metal?  🤔

What’s wrong with current technology that doesn’t involve experimenting with nano particles of metals – and I believe in some cases use the same purifiers, just introduced without metal?

Would Fauci say it’s safe?

Killing a bacteria is probably much easier than killing a protozoan cyst. I wonder how long it takes for chlorine dioxide to kill e.coli? Is this any faster than typical purification tablets or drops?

What happens to the nano particles that don’t get picked up by the magnet – direct into the blood stream like the smallest particles from wild fire smoke?

“nanosized flakes of aluminum oxide, molybdenum sulfide, copper, and iron oxide…Because the flakes are made of metal, they can be extracted from the water with an ordinary magnet.”

hmmm, my magnet will attract iron but not aluminum or copper or other metals so I’m a bit confused here. Is there some kind of further explanation?

…direct into the blood stream…

Flashing on becoming a human magnet after using this purification method on a 4 month thru hike :)  Or maybe Wolverine’s weaker, less deadly side kick.

Metal in my body might make me trigger the airport metal detectors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922601/

In one of the tables states they tested up to 100 nanometers and (that is?) the upper size of nano particles crossing through cell wall.

Google says 15nm is the average size of particles in sun block which is relatively safe and has been used for decades.

Based on that, i conclude its not the particle size that makes it bad, its the chemical composition of the nano particle. Plastic=bad. Gold=inert. This stuff? I assume they would test for bio toxicity considering the odds of some ingestion are nearly 100%

I had to check the calendar to see if this was April 1.  Maybe it’s an old joke.  Besides, who uses 6.8-oz beakers for backpacking hydration?

https://news.stanford.edu/2023/05/18/new-technology-uses-ordinary-sunlight-disinfect-drinking-water/#:~:text=A%20low%2Dcost%2C%20recyclable%20powder,access%20to%20safe%20drinking%20water.

What if preventing waterborne diseases was as easy as making Kool-Aid? 

We already have that: Chlorine dioxide.

This idea is just a novel way of making hydrogen peroxide, which is the actual purification agent (along with the hydroxyl radicals). So the question becomes, “Is it cheaper or safer or somehow better than other ways of making hydrogen peroxide?”.

For backpacking, it would be just as easy (and maybe safer) to carry hydrogen peroxide. Or chlorine dioxide, which is plentiful, cheap, supremely light, and well-tested for safety.

If it IS a cheap way of making large quantities of hydrogen peroxide, then removing/recycling the nanoparticles would become part of the process, wouldn’t it?

Novel chemistry is cool and stuff, but I don’t see this outselling Potable Aqua or Aquamira anytime soon.

(Oh, but is it FASTER than chlorine dioxide? That was what I tried to ask above; we cannot tell from the description whether the hydrogen peroxide is as fast or as thorough as the well-known chlorine dioxide, because we are trying to kill more than just bacteria when on trail. The difference between 20 minutes and 4 hours in ClO2 instructions is because of the difficulty of killing cryptosporidium cysts in cold water. Unless hydrogen peroxide somehow does a better job, then this stuff may not be superior to ClO2 in any way.)

Ummm…good ‘ol katadyn wand works very well (in clear water!) with no metal nano particles involved. And in about the same amount of time.

Of course, I’m not purifying water for billions of people.

Still, as Whitman says, “I am large” (in the belly anyway) “and contain multitudes”. Happily these all drink the same water as me. Phew!

So we should carry magnets and metals to avoid the weight of a Sawyer mini?  And yes, 6.8 ounces ain’t enough for me.  Mark me as unconvinced.

I’m open to the idea. Somebody smarter than me might find an application.

Figure this thing out.

https://www.gopurepod.com/

these metals nano particles would go great with the bleach I swallow and the UV Pen in stick in throat since 2020 lol

disclaimer: satire. please do not use bleach or UV pens on or in any body parts.

Some of the links were obvious hype.  But also saw no references to toxic substances, not just beasties.  Can always boil water, but nowadays, it is the toxins that are a concern, as we continue to pollute our planet.

This may be a solution looking for a problem. For obvious reasons, it’s probably not ideal for backpacking, and I’m not sure it will scale well to treatment-plant volumes. There may be a low-resource residential environment where it is efficient.

Here’s the link to the original publication (paywalled).

As far as I can tell, all of the authors are material scientists, not microbiologists, so I wouldn’t take any of the claims about disinfection too seriously. Giardia can be killed by H2O2, but requires pretty high concentrations, it’s not clear that they achieved adequate levels to do this.

That said, it does appear that they have created a hydrogen peroxide generator that probably does kill bugs. If the powder is indeed regenerable, it seems plausible to put it on a solid support inside water vessels. That way you wouldn’t have to worry about drinking it.

Since the work was done at Stanford, no doubt the authors have already created a startup to try to capitalize. There they will re-learn the lessons of thousands of academics before them — that it is 100X easier to do a proof-of-concept than create a safe and marketable product.

Stanford!!!…grrr.

Jeff, in Berkeley