At present, an estimated 663 million people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water.

A new solution to the threat of water-related illnesses — which kills 3.4 million people every year — was created by researchers from Carnegie Mellon and the University of Virginia. The drinkable book that can save lives by making polluted water safe to consume. Drinkable Book has pages which are made of treated paper which can purify water when it passes killing over 99 percent of bacteria.

Leveraging on the bacteria-killing properties of silver and inexpensive copper, a US researchers has developed a low cost, simple and easily transportable paper-based method to purify drinking water.

Called "The Drinkable Book", and each page of the device is impregnated with bacteria-killing metal nanoparticles.

It's an instruction manual with information on how and why water should be filtered.Once read, its pages can be torn out and used to turn dirty water into drinkable water.

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.

Each page can be removed from the book and slid into a special holding device in which water is poured through and filtered.

According to Theresa Dankovich, postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who developed the "Drinkable Book", a page can clean up to 100 litere of drinking water and the entire book can filter one person's water needs for four years.

Bacteria killer

Although silver and similar metals have been known for centuries to have the ability to kill bacteria, no one had put them into paper to purify drinking water.

Field investigations of the water purification application were conducted in Limpopo, South Africa, as well as northern Ghana, Haiti and Kenya. trials were  conducted at 25 sources of contaminated water in South Africa, Ghana, and Bangladesh proving that the paper could successfully eliminate bacteria.

But even with highly contaminated water sources like that of Africa , it can achieve 99.9 percent purity with our silver- and copper-nanoparticle paper, bringing bacteria levels comparable to those of US drinking water.

Highlights

Its pages that can be torn out to filter drinking water. Proven effective in its first field trials.

It combines treated paper with printed information on how and why water should be filtered.

Its pages contain nanoparticles of silver or copper effective bacteria killers in the water as it passes through.

In trials at 25 contaminated water sources in South Africa, Ghana and Bangladesh, the paper successfully removed more than 99 per cent of bacteria.

Resulting levels of contamination are similar to US tap water.

Tiny amounts of silver or copper also leeched into the water, but these were well below safety limits.

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

Dr Teri Dankovich, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, developed and tested the technology for the book over several years, working at McGill University in Canada and then at the University of Virginia.

Solution is aimed at communities in developing countries.

How it works

The bugs absorb silver or copper ions — depending on the nanoparticles used — as they percolate through the page.

Ions come off the surface of the nanoparticles, and those are absorbed by the microbes.

One page can clean up to 100 litres of water. A book could filter one person's water supply for four years.

All you need to do is tear out a paper, put it in a simple filter holder and pour water into it from rivers, streams, wells, etc. and out comes clean water – and dead bacteria as well.

 

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.

The next stage is to test the books in larger trials where they are used by local residents.

 

 

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Sources :

http://gulfnews.com/news/offbeat/bug-killing-book-pages-clean-murky-drinking-water-1.1568706

http://kickerdaily.com/drinkable-book-promises-to-filter-dirty-water/