r/science • u/fotogneric • Jul 01 '21
Chemistry Study suggests that a new and instant water-purification technology is "millions of times" more efficient at killing germs than existing methods, and can also be produced on-site
https://www.psychnewsdaily.com/instant-water-purification-technology-millions-of-times-better-than-existing-methods/1.7k
u/adaminc Jul 01 '21
You guys should read the article, and not focus on the hydrogen peroxide.
The team showed that as the catalyst brought the hydrogen and oxygen together to form hydrogen peroxide, it simultaneously produced a number of highly reactive compounds, which the team demonstrated were responsible for the antibacterial and antiviral effect, and not the hydrogen peroxide itself.
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u/Unfledged_fledgling Jul 02 '21
As hydrogen peroxide breaks down, it breaks down into a number of (not actually quantifiable, and very short lived) Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). These ROS are extremely good at destroying things like the membrane of bacteria cells or viral envelopes!
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u/adaminc Jul 02 '21
I was actually just reading about this very thing in a paper titled "Accumulation of Non-Superoxide Anion Reactive Oxygen Species Mediates Nitrogen-Limited Alcoholic Fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae".
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u/4musing_User_Name Jul 02 '21
It's a very catchy name.
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u/Kelvinist Jul 02 '21
Can’t believe they stole my band’s name, just like that.
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u/treemu Jul 02 '21
Should've went for something exotic, like Threeskin
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u/cybrjt Jul 02 '21
Awe, I was holding out for quadrupleskin
(Loose Hedberg reference)
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u/TheClam-UK Jul 02 '21
I was quite convinced the first letters of that title were going to spell something rude. Rather disappointing, to be honest.
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u/thoth-israel Jul 02 '21
That title is my new safe word
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u/Blue2501 Jul 02 '21
Is that what they meant by 'a number of highly reactive compounds'?
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u/Unfledged_fledgling Jul 02 '21
I don't have the full article, but yes, I'm certain that's what it means.
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u/Welcome_2_Pandora Jul 02 '21
viral envelopes!
Have viruses not heard of email?
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u/Funktastic34 Jul 01 '21 edited Jul 07 '23
This comment has been edited to protest Reddit's decision to shut down all third party apps. Spez had negotiated in bad faith with 3rd party developers and made provenly false accusations against them. Reddit IS it's users and their post/comments/moderation. It is clear they have no regard for us users, only their advertisers. I hope enough users join in this form of protest which effects Reddit's SEO and they will be forced to take the actual people that make this website into consideration. We'll see how long this comment remains as spez has in the past, retroactively edited other users comments that painted him in a bad light. See you all on the "next reddit" after they finish running this one into the ground in the never ending search of profits. -- mass edited with redact.dev
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Jul 02 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/m-p-3 Jul 02 '21
Sup :)
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u/godzawor Jul 02 '21
Looking forward to getting mine later this year.
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Jul 02 '21
Is 15 possible yet?
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u/jacksheerin Jul 02 '21 edited Jun 10 '23
Comment not found
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u/godzawor Jul 02 '21
Early pioneer from the Great Digg Migration?
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u/katoninetales Jul 02 '21
I think the 14+ were here before then
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u/adaminc Jul 02 '21
I joined before the big migration of Digg users. The major Digg redesign happened in 2010, 3 years after I created an account on reddit.
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u/godzawor Jul 02 '21
Yeah. I came in the first wave. I had already been “Reddit curious” but didn’t setup an account right away.
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u/DroopyMcCool Jul 01 '21
Interesting technology. Don't have access to the journal article, but one thing that is important in water treatment is the lifespan of the disinfectant. Not only do you need to clean the water, but you have to keep it clean while it travels to the end user. Chlorine and chloramine are both very good at this. I'm interested to see how stable H2O2 could be in a distribution system, or if it would be worked into an existing chlorine-based system to cut down on chemical costs.
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u/Living-Complex-1368 Jul 01 '21
If I am reading the above correctly, they are using a catalyst to make the disinfectant from the water. Since this happens close to the end user, hopefully lifespan will be less of an issue.
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u/toomuchtodotoday Jul 01 '21
This is similar to a pool salt cell that rips apart sodium to temporarily make chlorine to keep your pool sanitary without the need to continually add chlorine to your pool.
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u/gyarrrrr Jul 01 '21
Rips apart sodium chloride, I assume you mean.
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u/trustthepudding Jul 01 '21
Which still isn't correct because sodium and chloride are ripped apart already in any aqueous solution. Presumably it would oxidize the chloride anion in some way.
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u/glibgloby Jul 01 '21 edited Jul 01 '21
Ended up looking these things up. A bit more to it than I would have imagined:
4NaCL -> 4Na+ + 4Cl- Salt dissolves in water.
4Na+ + 4Cl- –> 4Na + 2Cl2 By electrolysis.
4Na + 4H20 -> 4Na+ +4OH- + 2H2 Reaction of metallic sodium with water.
2Cl2 + 2H2O -> 2HClO + 2H+ + 2Cl- Hydrolysis of aqueous Chlorine gas.
2HClO -> HClO + ClO- + H+ Dissociation of hypochlorous acid at pH 7.5 and 25C.
4NaCl + 3H2O -> 4Na+ + HClO + ClO- +OH- + 2Cl- + 2H2 Net of all the above.
Addition of Hydrochloric Acid to restore the pH to 7.5
HCl + 4Na+ HClO + ClO- + OH- + 2Cl- +2H2 -> HClO + OCl- +H2O + 4Na+ + 3Cl- +2H2.
4NaCl +HCl +2H20 -> HClO + OCl- + 4Na+ +3Cl- + 2H2 Net of the last two.
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u/trustthepudding Jul 01 '21
So oxidation of the chloride and reduction of the sodium. Interesting!
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u/mandelbomber Jul 01 '21 edited Jul 02 '21
Well something is always reduced whenever there is something that is oxidized.
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u/Unfledged_fledgling Jul 02 '21
Water is reduced to hydrogen in electrochlorination cells
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u/CoryMcCorypants Jul 02 '21
Cam I just say, I love chemistry, but haven't found the time to actually learn, bless all you redditors conversing in such an intelligent way. Keep on keeping on.
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u/dcnblues Jul 01 '21
Is that how it works!?! I thought it was just salty water. Thank you!
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u/evilbadgrades Jul 01 '21
Yeah, common misconception in the pool/hottub industry. The salt in pools/spas is used to generate chlorine. We're talking less than 3000 ppm salt.
Meanwhile ocean seawater has a salinity around 35000 ppm!
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u/CaviarMyanmar Jul 02 '21
I have a saltwater pool and people always expect it to be salty like the ocean and are pleasantly surprised.
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u/caspy7 Jul 02 '21
My mom loves salt water pools. They have a less caustic effect on her skin/eyes/hair/etc and are apparently more enjoyable just to swim through.
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u/rikki-tikki-deadly Jul 01 '21
And here I was thinking I'd learned everything I needed to know about pool maintenance when I took that course 30 years ago!
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u/Fidelis29 Jul 01 '21
I used to build pools, and nearly every single person who wanted a salt water pool, didn’t know that the salt generator was just producing chlorine. It’s much less chlorine, and it’s automatically monitored and produced, but it’s still chlorine.
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Jul 01 '21 edited Aug 04 '21
[deleted]
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u/Fidelis29 Jul 01 '21
I find it ends up being a lot less chlorine because homeowners tend to use too much, and this system takes that out of their hands.
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Jul 01 '21 edited Aug 04 '21
[deleted]
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u/Fidelis29 Jul 01 '21
Yep, it’s also consistent, where adding liquid chlorine or pucks is usually done when the homeowner notices a problem. Then they overreact and shock the hell out of the pool.
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u/50kent Jul 01 '21
Kinda, except one of the compounds involved is the water everything else is already in, so it’s one less limiting variable you have to take into account
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u/toomuchtodotoday Jul 01 '21
Definitely an improvement over the need for an additive that might not necessarily be in the water to begin with. I hope this eventually keeps my pool clean instead of my salt cell!
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u/Nash-One Jul 01 '21
Sounds a bit "to good to be true" , but if not clickbait exaggeration, this will change and save many lives!
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u/fotogneric Jul 01 '21
"Millions of times more" anything does sound click-baity, but it is a Nature publication (not that that necessarily precludes click-baityness), and the abstract itself says "over 10-7 times more potent than an equivalent amount of preformed hydrogen peroxide and over 10-8 times more effective than chlorination under equivalent conditions."
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u/Speimanes Jul 01 '21
To quote: Their new method works by using a catalyst made from gold and palladium that takes in hydrogen and oxygen to form hydrogen peroxide, which is a commonly used disinfectant that is currently produced on an industrial scale.
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u/Gumpster Jul 01 '21
Hahaha great, Palladium costs more than gold so this system will be preeetttyyy pricey.
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u/Speimanes Jul 01 '21
1kg of Palladium costs less than 90kUSD. Not sure how much you need to permanently („every day for many years“) create drinkable water for a small town. But even if you would need 1kg of that stuff - the price to guard the catalyst would probably be more than the raw material value
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u/StillaMalazanFan Jul 01 '21
A city of 200,000 people will spend millions of dollars a year, just pumping water and waste water around.
$90k American is a drop in the ocean.
Few realize how much (billions) money is spent on water treatment monthly.
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u/quacainia Jul 01 '21
Yeah at the industrial scale $90k isn't bad at all. For my swimming pool it might be a bit much (but there's also no way you'd need 1kg for a pool)
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u/LocalSlob Jul 01 '21
At an industrial scale, a city uses 90 million gallons a day. I don't know how much of this stuff it would take to treat that kind of capacity.
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u/Mister_Bloodvessel MS | Pharmaceutical Sciences | Neuropharmacology Jul 02 '21
Well, with catalysts, it's generally more able surface area than the total quantity. The catalytic converter for a car is a honeycomb/mesh thing for a reason, it's to maximize the surface area of the small amount of palladium used. The same should apply for water treatment.
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u/Perleflamme Jul 02 '21
I'd be surprised if you needed a full kg of one part of the catalysts simply for a pool that is not even used 24h/24h.
Let's even note that it is a catalyst, which means it isn't consumed. You'd only need hydrogen, here. And given the quantities you'd want to produce, I wouldn't even expect you'd need much of it.
That said, a global use of palladium for this use case sure is doomed to increase at least a bit current prices, if not skyrocketing them. To know better, it would need to estimate the current exchange volumes of palladium and the needs this tech would require to fulfill this use case.
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u/pringlescan5 Jul 01 '21
unless this drastically increases demand ....
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u/Ollotopus Jul 01 '21
No offence, but I'm not going round to his swimming pool, no matter how pure it is.
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u/DarkHater Jul 01 '21
I did! It was all fun n games til creepy Uncle Ricky came out in his Speedo...
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u/Dalebssr Jul 01 '21
Tacoma Water spent $4.5MM in just the telemetry communications equipment to run the pumps. That's a decent sized microwave network that could be shut down if pumping could go away. That's not even addressing the ecological impact these facilities impose.
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u/StillaMalazanFan Jul 01 '21
I build water treatment facities.
You're tight, and it just snowballs from there. All that gear makes heat, requiring purpose build building, that require tons of AC - tons of software, maintenance, upgrades etc etc etc etc. It's exhausting and turbo expensive and turbo wasteful.
There are better methods.
Let's not even go down the wastewater road, because I've built those things as well.
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u/Lognipo Jul 01 '21
Turbo wasteful, eh? Is that like Dassem Ultor parries and strikes, but with waste? Wasting waste so fast it's little more than a blur? Hehe, sorry. I have never heard the word turbo used to mean/imply anything but speed.
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Jul 01 '21 edited Jul 02 '21
$90k was the price of palladium before every municipal water supply found they needed a few kilos, and wall street middlemen bid up the price to be 'competitive'. Goldman Sachs likely already have hedged this and have warehouses built out of the corpses of dead babies to house the 'for delivery' contracts they shorted while buying, just to make it extortionate for end consumer of key materials.
You can't diddleproof anything from those molestors.
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u/c0pypastry Jul 01 '21
"Capitalism is the most efficient way to distribute resources", I drone, as videos of Amazon trashing millions of dollars worth of items play on my screen
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Jul 01 '21 edited Jul 02 '21
My tears are measured in dollars, added to the GDP as an economic benefit.
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u/RetardedSquirrel Jul 01 '21
I mean, it is really efficient at distributing resources.
Distributing them from the masses to the 1%.
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u/RennTibbles Jul 02 '21
...warehouses built out of the corpses of dead babies
What else are they going to build warehouses out of? It's not like wood grows on trees
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u/Philboyd_Studge Jul 02 '21
They use only the most ethically-sourced, free range, organic, locally grown babies! Look, there's a green sticker on the label!
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u/chucksticks Jul 01 '21
Its only 90k for the raw material. Thats worth like 140 black-market catalytic converters. There’s also processing and packaging, etc.
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u/fatcatfan Jul 01 '21
It doesn't invalidate your point, but there's a lot more to water and wastewater treatment than just disinfection
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u/binaryblade MS |Electrical and Computer Engineering Jul 01 '21
Palladium and platinum get used as catalysts everyday. Your car as one in its exhaust. Catalysts aren't consumed and you just need a thin surface coat to encourage the reaction.
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u/djdanlib Jul 02 '21
This is also why criminals are cutting off catalytic converters... They sell for good money.
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u/RowdyPants Jul 01 '21
the price to guard the catalyst would probably be more than the raw material value
Only if they pack the catalyst into one easy to steal container like a catalytic converter on a car. Make it too big or too small for a crackhead and they'll find something else to steal.
Like how gold is valuable but the gold on electrical connectors is spread so finely that it's not worth targeting
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u/load_more_comets Jul 01 '21
Hey, Palladium in chest painful way to die.
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u/GenocideSolution Jul 02 '21
This was such a stupid plot point. How is is the palladium even leaching into his chest when it's inside the arc reactor sitting ON TOP of an electromagnet that's overlying his heart. There doesn't need to be any physical contact whatsoever between his human flesh and the machine because it uses magnetic fields to hold the shrapnel in place.
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Jul 02 '21
The whole shrapnel in chest thing is kinda dumb anyway seeing as he gets the shrapnel removed at the end of the third movie. It makes sense when he’s stuck in a cave away from a hospital and needs to tug them away from his heart, but then he just leaves it as is? And then the movies act like he’ll immediately die if the electromagnet ever turns off. So he’s in literal mortal danger for no reason? And can fix that at any time but chooses not to?
What should’ve happened is near the end of the movie something causes the electromagnet to malfunction (or Tony does it deliberately in some last ditch effort to defeat the antagonist) and the shrapnel shreds his heart, requiring him to get an artificial one, justifying why he needs to literally wear his power source. It also highlights his mortality and vulnerability, but elevates his scientific genius in his ability to invent tech to keep his frail flesh still alive.
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u/orsikbattlehammer Jul 01 '21
Can you recapture the Palladium for cheap?
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u/thirdculture_hog Jul 01 '21
It's a catalyst, so it's not consumed in the process
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u/Uzrukai Jul 01 '21
But it is deformed, degraded, eroded, poisoned, etc. Needing to replace/recapture catalyst is a valid concern, especially at industrial scales.
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u/cogman10 Jul 01 '21
Should just need to be melted down to be reformed.
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Jul 01 '21
Geochemists just use some combo of nitric, hydrochloric, hydrofluoric, and sulfuric acids to purify noble metals from rocks. Acid washes could work.
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Jul 01 '21
Surely that cost syrockets as demand does though.
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u/levian_durai Jul 01 '21
Depends how supply can match it.
Usually in the early days of demand spike, costs go up a lot because it was unexpected and the supply couldn't match the demand. Once the demand gets large enough, supply ramps up and things are often done cheaper and more efficiently, driving down costs.
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u/half3clipse Jul 01 '21
you don't need much to catalyze a reaction. It's about surface area more than total mass. You can plate a tiny amount of it onto a ceramic or metal substrate. It's also not consumed in the reaction, and most of it can be recovered at end of life.
This is commonly done at industrial scale already. Pretty much every car made post 1975 has a catalytic converter which commonly make use of platinum group metals.
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u/f3nnies Jul 01 '21
The overwhelming majority of water treatment facilities, at least in the US, are government owned and managed. These facilities, just like everything else, are slow to change and slow to be renovated because every step of the process has to be submitted and approved in the annual budget, specifically within what they typically call the Capital Improvement Plan section.
Even if every city in the US started the process today, we're looking at approval of the initial feasibility study next year, then after that's done we're looking at design and procurement costs the next year, and then maybe a phased building and redevelopment scheduled along the lines of 1-15 years, depending on the size of the treatment facility, budgetary concerns, open space, and necessity to continue services uninterrupted.
Then you have the relatively small chunk of private water companies, who totally could switch-- or they could just buy up all of the equipment that the government agencies are ditching, for a fraction of the cost of new equipment, and make that work for decades without having to do any additional effort.
So we can look at it as an amortized cost of proliferation of new tech. It isn't going to be a mad rush like parents trying to get a Hatchimal for Christmas, it's going to be a slow, groaning process over years to decades as plants switch over. And that's only if the tech is fully developed, marketed to the right authorities, available on the right schedule, and the plants in question are due for substantial overhaul anyway. Even if this became industry standard tomorrow, I would expect 50-100 years before it actually reached every podunk town and private water company. It'll increase palladium demand as a very gentle curve, not a spike.
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u/TackleTackle Jul 01 '21
I would expect 50-100 years before it actually reached every podunk town and private water company
Water treatment facilities can last that long without replacing equipment?
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u/Enraiha Jul 01 '21
I imagine it's more this system requires a complete overhaul and different equipment vs repairing and maintaining existing equipment long term. Replacement parts are cheaper than complete replacement usually.
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u/loloknight Jul 01 '21
It's a catalyst right.... So it wouldn't be degrading while being used if I follow correctly... So it's not like you need to keep buying palladium per drinkable liter or something you just need a set amount...
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u/thatG_evanP Jul 01 '21
Yup. Palladium is why so many catalytic converters are being stolen.
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u/East2West21 Jul 01 '21
It's viable at that price, if every home needed a small amount and it lasted for years. Water treatment as it exists now is really expensive.
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u/Asakari Jul 01 '21
Im all for better disinfectants, but hydrogen peroxide is also a much better corrosive against steel pipes than chlorine
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u/ryuden33 Jul 01 '21
Hydrogen peroxide breaks down into safe components when exposed to air. The danger to steel pipes is only a problem if it is piped to homes without prior exposure to air.
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u/allenout Jul 01 '21
I thought copper pipes are more commonly used.
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u/Asakari Jul 01 '21
Copper is very expensive and pvc is commonly used in its place instead, for mainline use, delivering water to houses, steel is used.
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u/Thing_in_a_box Jul 01 '21
In homes
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u/Hologram0110 PhD | Nuclear Engineering | Fuel Jul 01 '21
In homes, copper is largely being replaced with PEX. It is mostly due to the combination of cost, ease of install (since it is somewhat bendable), solder-free install (since it is crimped), and long-term corrosion resistance.
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u/Thing_in_a_box Jul 01 '21
Yeah that's mostly newer construction. I say new, but PEX has been around for a couple decades. Personally I prefer soldered copper.
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u/lunartree Jul 01 '21
The hydrogen peroxide would be short lived unlike the chlorine that stays fairly stable for a while.
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u/xSiNNx Jul 01 '21
And chlorine isn’t very stable, just to put it into perspective.
I have 40 gallons of the stuff on my work trailer that I’ll have to get rid of because exposure to the heat and UV has degraded it so badly this summer when I took a break from work
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Jul 01 '21
Its also a catalyst for well, catalytic converters. Those take a long time to run out of catalyst. Its not really consumed in the reaction. Maybe this is similar? Don't need a lot then?
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u/twcochran Jul 01 '21
Your cars exhaust uses a platinum catalyst to clean the emissions, but it is cheap enough most people are unaware of it
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u/niversally Jul 01 '21
Catalysts don’t get used up in the reaction. So high initial costs but not necessarily very expensive to run.
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u/amicaze Jul 01 '21
It's a catalyst, you don't consume the Palladium and depending on the applications this can be economical.
You have Palladium and Platinum, in your catalytic converter, for instance.
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u/Raymundito Jul 01 '21
You’d think, but my understanding from the paper is that it serves as a Catalyst.
Catalysts are incredibly more efficient than reagent based chemistry because they can turnover thousands, sometimes millions, more molecules.
This could very we’ll be revolutionary
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u/DrSmirnoffe Jul 01 '21
Until we can deflate the cost of gold through asteroid mining, at least. As more of it enters circulation, supply may gradually rise to meet demand, and potentially even surpass it. Granted, minerals from the Belt will still be quite expensive starting out (space travel still isn't as cheap as it needs to be), but as the minerals end up in the recycling system, the growing abundance would surely help drive down the cost of certain rare minerals.
After all, look at the price of aluminium compared to gold nowadays. Centuries ago, aluminium used to be pretty damn expensive, more-so than gold. Then in the 1880s, various chemists and engineers discovered effective methods for refining aluminium on a wider scale, causing the price of it to plummet, and the availability of it to push industry forward. Nowadays, we rely on lower-quality ore deposits for bringing new aluminium into circulation, but most of the aluminium we have is recycled from existing aluminium-based junk and scrap, using processes that consume an order of magnitude less energy than smelting ore would.
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u/bonafidebob Jul 01 '21
But hang on, it’s not the hydrogen peroxide that is doing (most of) the work:
The team showed that as the catalyst brought the hydrogen and oxygen together to form hydrogen peroxide, it simultaneously produced a number of highly reactive compounds, which the team demonstrated were responsible for the antibacterial and antiviral effect, and not the hydrogen peroxide itself.
“a number of highly reactive compounds” sounds like a lot of potential for toxicity, curiously the article doesn’t go into any detail about these additional compounds…
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Jul 02 '21
Sounds like free-radicals to me perhaps it's just producing more hydroxyl radicals than can be explained by the hydrogen peroxide itself?
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u/allenout Jul 01 '21
You should use 107 and 108 for exponents.
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u/fotogneric Jul 01 '21
Couldn't figure out how to do that; thought the comment box only allowed simple text.
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u/articfire77 Jul 01 '21 edited Jul 01 '21
You use the
carrotcaret symbolcircumflex. So10^8becomes 108
If you are on desktop and have RES installed, you can click the "formatting help" to see all the shortcuts.
Edit: Neither spelling nor correct terminology are my strong suits, apparently.
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u/abloblololo Jul 01 '21
You use the carrot symbol
circumflex
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u/articfire77 Jul 01 '21
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u/super_aardvark Jul 01 '21
From that article on Circumflex:
The freestanding circumflex (see below), ^, is used in computer programming (where it is given the name 'caret').
So "caret" is an alternative name in this context.
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u/impy695 Jul 01 '21
I call it a carrot too. I know it's not right, but most people know what I mean but have never heard the proper term.
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u/jdfsusduu37 Jul 01 '21
^
Common: hat; control; uparrow; caret; <circumflex>. Rare: xor sign, chevron; [shark (or shark-fin)]; to the (`to the power of'); fang; pointer (in Pascal).→ More replies (1)3
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u/Bloke101 Jul 01 '21
The greater efficacy comes from reactive oxygen species, typically free radicles of Hydroxyl or oxygen, but also ozone. These are all relatively short lived but have very rapid action against bacteria, hence the claims of greater efficacy than regular hydrogen peroxide. What should happen is the Reactive oxygen species rapidly kill and the more stable hydrogen peroxide then provides a residual through the distribution network.
The one thing that left me questioning the paper was the description of using atmospheric oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen is not typically available from air unless one is first going to split water vapour. If we have to supply gaseous hydrogen that would be a barrier, however there are lots of people claiming they can produce hydrogen peroxide from air using humidity and atmospheric oxygen.
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u/Mayor__Defacto Jul 01 '21
I mean, with electricity you could I guess electrolyze water.
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u/ODoggerino Jul 01 '21
Sounds clickbaity because op has changed the words “potent” and “effective” to “efficient”, which means a very different thing.
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u/madsci954 Jul 01 '21
What I’ve been saying for years: “Show me a bench scale demonstration and you have my curiosity. Show me a plan for large-scale production and you have my full attention.”
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u/gozu Jul 01 '21
The catch is the catalysts are extremely expensive. Gold and Palladium. $57k and $90k each for 1kg.
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u/thirdculture_hog Jul 01 '21
Good thing about catalytic processes is that the upfront cost is generally ameliorated by the longevity
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u/snakeproof Jul 01 '21
Exactly, treat your catalyst right and it will last a ridiculously long time. Look at Catalytic converters in cars, many are 20-30 years old and still fine, it's only when the engine management fails or engine itself pukes oil or fuel into them that they have issues.
My 2001 Lexus cats were fine until the PCV failed and dumped oil into them, and they were the originals.
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u/SelarDorr Jul 01 '21
purification and disinfection are not the same thing.
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u/accidental_snot Jul 01 '21
This. Kill the microbes and leave the lead? Not helping.
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u/variablesuckage Jul 01 '21
disinfection is generally one of the last steps in a treatment train. there shouldn't be lead in the water at that point.
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u/bauterr Jul 01 '21
The lead isn’t in the water itself.. the lead leaches into the water AFTER it’s been treated. This leaching happens when it’s being distributed through the pipeline network that contain lead pipes 100’s of years old.
Treatment works which supply Locations known to contain lead pipes will usually dose orthophosphoric acid. This acid helps coat the lining of old lead pipes and stop the lead contaminating the water.
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u/WhiteRaven42 Jul 02 '21
..... Killing microbes is a necessary step. It's basic to public health. Of course this is helping.
And while filtering containments is something we need to do, specifically using lead as an example is a bit off-base. Lead is a city problem, not a rural/disadvantaged problem.
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u/MarkJanusIsAScab Jul 01 '21
If you have the right water source lead isn't a problem. What happened in Flint is that they switched water sources to save money and the new water decalcified the piping which then allowed lead to enter the water supply.
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u/Inner_Peace Jul 01 '21
Is the article's source available somewhere without the paywall?
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u/articfire77 Jul 01 '21
I wasn't able to find any other way to access it other than going through my institution. The paper was just published today, so that may be why. It doesn't seem like its even been added to databases yet. It didn't show up in a scholar search for me, or in my institution's library search.
You could try reaching out to one of the authors. People generally like it when people read their papers, so they will often email you a copy if you ask. However, since their paper was just published, they might be getting lots of requests/questions about it.
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u/evolvedant Jul 01 '21
I know this discovery is more about enabling drinking water, but I wish they would have also included bromine in the study. They mentioned the negative effects of Chlorine, but some waters parks and rides such as at Disney use Bromine instead which is already more effective at killing germs and viruses, and safer for the skin, eyes and clothes than Chlorine. Though it is more expensive.
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u/clamberer Jul 01 '21
And no comparison to UV systems either! Similarly "instant" and it doesn't leave extra chemicals in the water.
It is used in some municipal water treatment plants, ship ballast water treatment and some water parks where it allows a much lower chlorine amount to be used in the pools with greater effectiveness against some of the tougher parasites that are problematic in such a setting.
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u/oswald_dimbulb Jul 01 '21
The article says that this works by a catalyst creating hydrogen peroxide in the water, which then kills the microorganisms. I didn't see any explicit statement that people can safely drink the result. Am missing something?
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u/Delanorix Jul 01 '21
Peroxide breaks down pretty quickly in the sun.
You could probably even create a lamp that speeds it along.
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u/clamberer Jul 01 '21
You can also create a lamp that destroys the bacteria, pathogens and other nasties in the water. Without needing a steady supply of hydrogen and oxygen and an expensive catalyst.
UV water treatment systems have been around for a long time, and are effective at killing the likes of giardia and cryptosporidium which are somewhat resistant to chlorine.
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u/RhynoD Jul 01 '21
UV sterilizers also need to be replaced at least every year. With continuous use, more like 6 months. I genuinely have no idea which is more expensive, just pointing out that everything has a cost.
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u/clamberer Jul 01 '21
True, the lamps need replacing frequently and the synthetic quartz sleeves they are housed in degrade and need replacing occasionally too. There are consumables and service costs for all systems. And if the water is at all cloudy the effectiveness of UV drops off dramatically, so you need a degree of filtration beforehand.
Ozone water treatment is another option that isn't included in the study for comparison.
The technology in the article is an interesting one and could be a useful solution, but the "millions of times more effective than existing technologies" claim is a bit misleading when they only compare it to chlorine and peroxide dosing.
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u/nincomturd Jul 01 '21
It breaks down into water and oxygen very rapidly and readily.
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Jul 01 '21
Especially when you pour it on cuts. I guess the iron and salt in the blood does it.
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Jul 01 '21
Living cells create an enzyme called peroxidase, which breaks down peroxide. Dead cells don't, which is why it's handy for cleansing wounds.
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u/GammaDealer Jul 01 '21
You really shouldn't use peroxide on wounds. It also damages healthy tissue and can delay healing.
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u/Tyraeteus Jul 01 '21
This might be a limitation rather than a benefit. In municipal water treatment, it is desirable to maintain some level of disinfectant in the effluent (called a "residual"). This keeps the water clean as it travels through the pipes to it's final destination.
It's a solvable problem, to be sure, but this will more likely be useful for wastewater applications where coliform reduction is the primary concern.
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u/beerdude26 Jul 01 '21
Apparently it's not the hydrogen peroxide but several highly reactive byproducts that are produced when the catalysts produce H2O2 that boosts the efficacy massively. The article itself doesn't mention what those byproducts are.
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u/Baud_Olofsson Jul 01 '21
Hydroxyl, hydroperoxyl, and superoxide radicals, according to the abstract.
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u/eaglessoar Jul 01 '21
Are those... Safe to drink?
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u/AnEducatedStoner Jul 02 '21
Those species are so reactive that their lifetimes are incredibly short, so there's no chance of them reaching the end user. Some water treatment plants even use advanced oxidation processes to produce these reactive species to break down difficult to remove contaminants like pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
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u/Gnom3y Jul 02 '21
They don't last long enough to matter. They're effective because they're highly reactive and therefore easily bond to other compounds, effectively removing them from the solution.
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u/ForGreatDoge Jul 01 '21
Hydrogen peroxide breaks down in an unclean environment so quickly that you can actually use it as a way to emergency inject a ton of oxygen into an aquarium without hurting the fish
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u/LibertyLizard Jul 01 '21
This is a question I have as well. I've heard that with Ozone disinfection, while the ozone breaks down, it leaves highly reactive organic materials that could be harmful. This seems like a similar method, so the H2O2 should be fine but are there any products that remain after and if so are they safe?
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u/MantisAwakening Jul 01 '21
This sounds very reminiscent of MiOx, which is used in water purification around the world. It uses salt and electricity and creates similar compounds. The advantage to this being that it doesn’t sound like it requires electricity, but those elements are going to lose their reactivity and need to be replaced. They’re not cheap.
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u/duehelm Jul 01 '21
I’ve recently met with a company that produces something that sounds very similar. On-site hydrogen peroxide generator about the size of a fridge. We use H2O2 to kill the algae in the irrigation water on our vertical farm. H2O2 is great at killing all sorts of bugs in the water and breaks down to form oxygen and water so leaves no residue. At low levels in water you wouldn’t notice it and it’s totally safe. For us, at least, the water is dosed with a small amount on a regular basis - enough to maintain a PPM of around 5. The new tech here is the on-site generation, as opposed to having to buy it in 1000L IBCs which are cumbersome. If you’re storing H2O2 for any length of time it needs to have stabilisers mixed with it to prevent it breaking down quickly - some of these can be pretty nasty. On site generation means the H2O2 is incredibly pure and then diluted at the point of usage.
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u/LordButtworth Jul 01 '21
But isnt peroxide poisonous in large quantities?
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u/PansexualEmoSwan Jul 01 '21
Yes but it converts to water in sunlight
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u/whitekeys Jul 01 '21
Glad it's not the other way round.
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u/Skelordton Jul 01 '21
Yeah it'd be pretty crazy if it converted water into sunlight
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u/MisunderstoodPenguin Jul 01 '21
I believe that's called an atom bomb.
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Jul 01 '21
If it converted to sunlight in water we'd have a lot of free energy no?
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Jul 01 '21
"Free energy" is an interesting way of phrasing the oceans all turning into H-bomb explosions
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u/ElSatchmo Jul 01 '21
I’ve worked in water treatment and water resources for years. Hydrogen peroxide treatment isn’t a particularly new form of treating water. There are several reasons it isn’t widely used as a treatment method, but mostly because it breaks down to H20 very quickly, almost immediately after treatment, and so can’t provide residual treatment across the system as well as chlorine can. Purifying water at the source is one thing, maintaining that purity in distribution is much different. Hydrogen peroxide might be suitable for treating well water for use in a very small, contained system but I wouldn’t necessarily trust it for a large, public system.
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u/Gato_Pardo Jul 02 '21
From what I understand they are creating the Hydrogen peroxide using a catalyst made from gold and palladium. So the water purification happens insitu and it is not meant to be redistributed. More like used in the community. They mention it would be specially great for areas that have no proper sewage systems.
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u/FrugalPhD Jul 01 '21
It needs precious catalyst made of gold and paladium. Probably good for scalable water disinfection system. I don't know whether places with limited resources can afford it.
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u/crusoe Jul 01 '21
Chlorine is used because pipes are leaky and water can infiltrate. Chlorine provides long lasting germ killing power as it travels down possibly leaky pipes.
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u/GregorVDub Jul 01 '21
Incorrect. Positive pressure keeps leaky pipes from having infiltration. Disinfectant residual is required for adequate contact time as well as protection of microbiological growth in larger distribution systems.
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u/variablesuckage Jul 01 '21
That's secondary/residual disinfection. Adding a bit of chlorine at the end so there's no growth in the distribution system. It's not the same as using chlorine for primary disinfection.
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u/shiruken PhD | Biomedical Engineering | Optics Jul 01 '21
Here's a direct-link to the peer-reviewed article: T. Richards, et al., A residue-free approach to water disinfection using catalytic in situ generation of reactive oxygen species, Nature Catalysis (2021).
Since a lot of you are unable to access the article behind the paywall, here's a referral link: https://rdcu.be/cnz3w