Nanotechnology Now - News Story: "Coated silica particles offer wastewater treatment hope"

Home > News > Coated silica particles offer wastewater treatment hope

April 24th, 2008

Coated silica particles offer wastewater treatment hope

Abstract:
The recent report entitled Water for People - Water for Life of the World Water Assessment Programme of the UNESCO says that more than 6000 people die every day due to water-related diseases, including diarrhoea, worm infections, and infectious diseases.

In addition, organic pollutants from industrial wastewater from pulp and paper mills, textiles and leather factories, steel foundries, and petrochemicals refineries, are a major cause of illness in parts of the world where regulations do not necessarily protect people from such industrial outflows.

So the availability of drinking quality water is fast becoming a major socio-economic issue across the globe, especially in the developing world. However, water purification technology is often complicated, requires sophisticated equipment and is expensive to run and maintain. Moreover, it usually requires a final costly disinfection stage.
Now a team of scientists at the Ian Wark Research Institute at the University of South Australia are tackling this by taking a nanotechnology approach to water purification - a move that has the potential to prevent disease and poisoning from affection millions of people.

Source:
engineerlive.com

Bookmark: