New Instant Water Disinfectant 'Millions of Times More Effective' Than Commercial Methods (upi.com) 80
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares news from UPI:
The creators of a new instant water disinfectant, made using only hydrogen and the surrounding air, claim their invention is "millions of times more effective" at ridding water of viruses and bacteria than commercial purification methods. In addition to revolutionizing municipal water cleaning, the inventors of the novel technique suggest their disinfectant can help safely and cheaply deliver potable water to communities in need.
Around the world, an estimated 780 million people are without reliable access to clean water, and millions more experience water scarcity at least once a month.
The technique — described Thursday in the journal Nature Catalyst — uses a catalyst of gold and palladium to instantly turn hydrogen and oxygen into hydrogen peroxide, a common disinfectant... The new disinfectant, which can be made and used on site, eliminates the safety issues associated with commercial hydrogen peroxide and chlorine purification methods. In lab tests, researchers found their catalyst yielded not only hydrogen peroxide, but a variety of highly reactive compounds called reactive oxygen species, or ROS. It turned out that these novel compounds were responsible for the majority of the new disinfectant's impressive antibacterial and antiviral abilities...
When compared to commercially produced hydrogen peroxide, scientists found their instant disinfectant was 10 million times more potent against viruses and bacteria.
Around the world, an estimated 780 million people are without reliable access to clean water, and millions more experience water scarcity at least once a month.
The technique — described Thursday in the journal Nature Catalyst — uses a catalyst of gold and palladium to instantly turn hydrogen and oxygen into hydrogen peroxide, a common disinfectant... The new disinfectant, which can be made and used on site, eliminates the safety issues associated with commercial hydrogen peroxide and chlorine purification methods. In lab tests, researchers found their catalyst yielded not only hydrogen peroxide, but a variety of highly reactive compounds called reactive oxygen species, or ROS. It turned out that these novel compounds were responsible for the majority of the new disinfectant's impressive antibacterial and antiviral abilities...
When compared to commercially produced hydrogen peroxide, scientists found their instant disinfectant was 10 million times more potent against viruses and bacteria.
Well, there goes more catalytic converters! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
BEV's don't need catalytic converters
Re: (Score:2)
hydrogen.
just add air and you have water.
it also generates electricity.
it is called.
fuel cell technology
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
oh ya.
forgot about that.
thnks
Re: (Score:1)
oh ya. forgot about that. thnks
:-)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
One characteristic of countries with poor water supply is also great income inequality. While some may have developed world income, most likely live a 10 or 20 dollars a day. In the US we have catalytic converters stolen because you can either work a day for $100 or steal a few catalytic converters and get a weeks pay with no taxes. In other words these devices are going to have to be secured.
Probably depends on where you live in the USA.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The highest minimum wage in the US is $18 and hour. After dedication you might have a little over a hundred dollars a day on a FTE basis. Minimum minimum wage is 7.25 which is around $50 a day after deductions. At $15 an hour you are looking at around $100 a day.
Sounds suspiciously like saying people working for minimum wage have to be thieves. In my area, we don't lock our doors at night.
Well, I suppose the paranoid ones do.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds suspiciously like saying people working for minimum wage have to be thieves.
That's a very odd reading of the GP.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds suspiciously like saying people working for minimum wage have to be thieves.
That's a very odd reading of the GP.
Then why on earth would he claim that minimum wage is linked to stealing catalytic converters?
" In the US we have catalytic converters stolen because you can either work a day for $100 or steal a few catalytic converters and get a weeks pay with no taxes.
Stealing catalytic converters, because they get paid so little - and must turn to crime to support themselves by stealing catalytic converters.
You read it your way, I'll read it mine. What's your read?
Re: (Score:2)
" In the US we have catalytic converters stolen because you can either work a day for $100 or steal a few catalytic converters and get a weeks pay with no taxes.
I read that as that there will be enough theft to be a threat to catalytic convertors, not a real suggestion that many people on minimum wage would do so as that seems like obvious hyperbole. But maybe I am bringing in my own prejudices because I know few people on low wages would steal like that.
Re: (Score:2)
" In the US we have catalytic converters stolen because you can either work a day for $100 or steal a few catalytic converters and get a weeks pay with no taxes.
I read that as that there will be enough theft to be a threat to catalytic convertors, not a real suggestion that many people on minimum wage would do so as that seems like obvious hyperbole. But maybe I am bringing in my own prejudices because I know few people on low wages would steal like that.
None of the people I or my wife know working minimum wage are remotely dishonest, which is why I object to OP's either or statement.
Many of the people my wife knows are food service people, waitresses in fact. This might sound odd, but many of these (largely women) really enjoy their work. Would they like a raise to 15 dollars per hours - I imagine, they'd probably like a raise to 100 dollars per hour.
Now here's something for everyone and the world to digest. While we argue amoung outselves that raisin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Sanitized for your protection. (Score:2)
When compared to commercially produced hydrogen peroxide, scientists found their instant disinfectant was 10 million times more potent against viruses and bacteria.
Just hook the grey water line up, and one could have a closed loop at home.
Re: Sanitized for your protection. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Run the grey water first through a plant bed (veggies or flowers doesn't matter). Plants seem to like it and the filtered grey water after the plant bed is clean enough for shower/washing hands/flushing toilets.The black water that comes from the toilet can actually also still be used as "overflow" under different plant beds (trees, weeds, bushes).
Re: (Score:2)
Stupid people will do stupid things. Anything that toxic to bacteria and viruses is going to be pretty toxic for us. So the ability to make something dangerous, for home use, yeah, pretty risky. They call things anti-biotic because they are anti-live not just anti-virus or anti-bacteria, the balance is what we can tolerate in low doses versus what the bacteria and virus can tolerate.
Super lethal is not a recommendation for anything any person can come in contact with, super safe and still kills viruses and
Re: (Score:2)
We are symbiotic with our microbiome; a fact that has been known for several decades now, and yet is ignored by most of mainstream medicine.
What kills them usually does kill us, usually by causing or contributing to chronic conditions from which a healthy microbiome would far better protect us.
Re: (Score:1)
Actually one place I used to live in had an Envirocycle water treatment plant that processes black water into stage 2 treated water that is disbursed on the garden, which in turn reduces or eliminates the need for watering.
Waste goes through a 2 stage anaerobic process and then 2 stage aerobic process with an aerator, then a chlorine treatment section at the end before it's pumped out to the garden.
You don't want to use it on your veges incase there's a problem with the system that would allow contaminants
Re: (Score:1)
This is the output specifications:
Effluent from the Envirocycle 10NR AWTS taken in any random grab sample shall comply with the following
standard:
â BOD5 less than 30 mg/L
â TSS less than 45 mg/L
â E. coil less than 100 cfu/100 ml
â Free residual chlorine greater than 0.2 and less than 2.0 mg/L
shrinkage? (Score:2)
Re: shrinkage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: shrinkage? (Score:4, Informative)
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
For the lengths people will go to in order to find creative ways to kill themselves.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: shrinkage? (Score:1)
BULLSHIT ALERT! (Score:5, Insightful)
When compared to commercially produced hydrogen peroxide, scientists found their instant disinfectant was 10 million times more potent against viruses and bacteria.
So they have a truly magical compound that has the same chemical formula, but is more efficient. Right.
Re:BULLSHIT ALERT! (Score:5, Informative)
"In lab tests, researchers found their catalyst yielded not only hydrogen peroxide, but a variety of highly reactive compounds called reactive oxygen species, or ROS. It turned out that these novel compounds were responsible for the majority of the new disinfectant's impressive antibacterial and antiviral abilities..."
Re: (Score:3)
but a variety of highly reactive compounds called reactive oxygen species
The only stable ROS compound that you can make out of hydrogen and oxygen at room temperature is hydrogen peroxide. Everything else exists for milliseconds at most.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
While I'm skeptical of the claims too, it's not the same formula.
It is "hydroxyl, hydroperoxyl and superoxide radicals" + hydrogen peroxide.
The study brief doesn't specify the volume of water compared to the volume of catalyst. It could be this was for a tiny volume of water.
It also gives no clue to how they calculated effectiveness was millions of times higher.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:BULLSHIT ALERT! (Score:5, Informative)
A free copy of the Nature publication is available and a careful reading could be helpful, see link here [researchgate.net]. The authors freely admitted that they don't understand the full reaction, but they could reproduce the catalyst and the effect: 'We have yet to fully identify whether it is OH , OOH or a combination that is responsible for the disinfection and this will be a topic for future study. Furthermore, studies under real-world conditions are required. '
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
Thanks tekram.
Re: (Score:2)
I was going to look it up, but it costs $99 [nature.com]. So much for open access.
It seems like commercial hydrogen peroxide is sold with additives that reduce its effectiveness.
Re: (Score:3)
Except it doesn't have the same formula. It's H2O2 + a crapload of other ROS's generated inside the medium needing to be cleaned. The biggest question is how long does it take for all those products to decay because drinking them would be... a poor choice.
Re: (Score:3)
Probably not long. They're highly reactive, meaning they don't want to exist. The same ROS might well be produced in the usual anthraquinone process used to make hydrogen peroxide too, but they don't survive long enough to be useful for disinfectant.
Re: (Score:2)
a crapload of other ROS's generated inside the medium needing to be cleaned
Hydrogen peroxide works by generating ROS. And the peroxide generator itself will produce only hydrogen peroxide, because it's the only stable ROS that you can make out of hydrogen and oxygen. Maybe you'll also get some ozone.
Re: (Score:2)
FTA, the generation of additional ROSs is significantly greater than the introduction of H2O2 into the medium alone and since they are being generated inside the medium being cleaned their long term stability is irrelevant.
Re:BULLSHIT ALERT! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
If you put your palladium catalyst into a "medium being cleaned"
I suspect that their process might involve diverting a small amount of H2O and filtering/cleaning it with more expensive technologies. Then using this supply to catalytically generate a concentrated stream of H2O2 which can be injected into the bulk of the water being processed.
Re: (Score:1)
"Other homeopathic preparations may be prepared from an astounding array of substances that include snake venom, fecal matter, arsenic, gold, plutonium, blister beetles and the south pole of a magnet."
No platinum, though (the less loved precious metal it seems).
Oh, and is anyone interested in a large quantity of north poles of magnets? I'll let
Re: (Score:2)
Monopoles? Yeah, there is probably a huge market for them. Maybe they could be used to make nuclear fusion practical in three decades, instead of the thirty years it will probably take without them.
Re: (Score:2)
Monopoles are pretty much required for the economics of monorails to work out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
When compared to commercially produced hydrogen peroxide, scientists found their instant disinfectant was 10 million times more potent against viruses and bacteria.
So they have a truly magical compound that has the same chemical formula, but is more efficient. Right.
Agreed. Has all the warning-signs for a scam.
Re: (Score:2)
Nature Catalyst is gated, but a free pdf available (Score:5, Informative)
New COVID Treatment! (Score:4, Funny)
"Can't we just pump this disinfectant into the lungs of COVID patients . . . ?"
made using “only” hydrogen and air (Score:4, Informative)
and gold, and palladium.
So I guess I can pull out my obligatory joke - “For sufficiently loose definitions of ‘only’.”
Re: (Score:2)
Why did you include the gold and palladium and not the pipes, pumps, electricity, etc.?
Re: (Score:1)
Sure! It's just like how Bitcoin is made from nothing at all.
Re:made using “only” hydrogen and air (Score:5, Informative)
Assuming water is already available, the limiting factor would be energy. Looking at the Gibbs free energy of formation [wikipedia.org], water sits approximately twice as low on the energy scale as hydrogen peroxide. So you'd need to pump in a bit less than half the energy to break apart water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, to form hydrogen peroxide instead.
Re: (Score:3)
So for sufficiently large quantities of water treated, the amount of gold and palladium needed per liter of purified water produced approaches zero.
Given the suggested application (“communities in need”, aka third world countries), it seems unlikely that large-scale deployment is in the cards. More likely it’d have to be deployed village by village.
If they can get it working practically, it may turn out to be very useful.
Re: (Score:3)
unlikely that large-scale deployment is in the cards. More likely itâ(TM)d have to be deployed village by village.
And then you'll find out how fast the water monopolies descend on your successful community system and offer* to buy it up. They'll buy the system that was costing customers a few cents a day to operate and sell you what was your water for 10x or 20x that amount.
*Offer the politicians, not the village, co-op or customers.
Re: (Score:2)
So I guess I can pull out my obligatory joke - “For sufficiently loose definitions of ‘only’.”
Gold and palladium are hardly expensive when used as catalysts. They typically are plated over something far cheaper and more common. You fill up the reactor once and start spitting out clean water.
Only is a good definition here. There are many industrial processes that are far more expensive and not only use exostic materials, but actively consume them.
"Eliminates the safety hazards" (Score:2)
Instead of bottles of peroxide or halogen tablets our Third World friends and people in disaster zones will be using compressed hydrogen.
Unless they've got an idea to integrate solar electrolysis.If that could create enough hydrogen fast enough.
Nope. (Score:2)
The minimal hazard of compressed gases is not the problem but the weight of the cylinders vs containers of bulk powdered or tablet cleaning and disinfectant agents.
Re: (Score:2)
Probably actually diesel generators if there's no power at the site. Just sayin'
cost? (Score:2)
Anticipate the unanticipated (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Clean water was never clean (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Just cleaned of enough harmful stuff so that we humans could safely drink it. These days it seems that clean means just H2O. Note now that science reckons that eliminating stuff from food, water, the environment is an epically bad/lethal thing to be doing.
Worked at a place that the building had reclaimed water used in the bathrooms. It was hilarious to hear a woman talking to a guy about it. The guy was telling her it was recycled gray water. So it's not clean drinking water. Don't drink it. They had signs on the sinks saying not to drink it. So she was all uptight that washing her hands was making them dirty. LOL. Oh that was fun to listen to.
Residual disinfectant is important (Score:2)
Using a hydrogen peroxide or related disinfectant might be effective for water that will be used right away, but, as mentioned by a number of people above, it doesn't last long.
If you want to store that clean water for very long, or want to pipe it anywhere through a pipe system that isn't perfect, you want to use a disinfectant that stays in the water.
One example:
https://www.cdc.gov/safewater/... [cdc.gov]
Maybe it's possible to use hydrogen peroxide and related disinfectants safely if you are willing to spend extra
Is it T-Stoff? (Score:2)
Effects (Score:2)
The question is: are there any side effects?
Yes, purifying water is laudable, and hydrogen peroxide is safe at certain levels. However are those other "variety of highly reactive compounds" eliminated after the process? Or will they go onto eliminating the healthy cells in human bodies.
I am not trying to be alarmist, and welcome new technologies. But time after we tried new and safe things, and time after time we found long term issues (margarine over butter, formula over milk, asbestos for insulation, and