Breakthrough method to make contaminated water fit to drink

Cape Town - Using nano-fibres, researchers at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, have developed a filter sachet - looking like a tea bag - that costs less than a cent and can clean one litre bottle of the most polluted water.

With millions of people in the world who have no access to clean drinking water, researchers of many nations are looking for solutions to this problem. In most cases, cleaning contaminated or naturally toxic water is sought to be filtered and cleansed on a large scale, yet the method invented by Eugene Cloete is different. Cloete, of the faculty of science at Cape Town's Stellenbosch University, calls his method a "decentralised, point-of-use technology". What these few words mean when we look at the reality of it, is this. A re-usable bottle is filled with available water -- from a dirty river or a contaminated well, for example -- and the bottle's cap has been designed to hold one of the tea bag shaped filters. Next, a filter is inserted, the bottle is closed, and when one drinks from it the water passes through the filter and is cleansed of pollutants, toxins and bacteria. The cleansing is achieved by the bag's ingredients, ultra-thin nano-scale fibers in combination with carbon grains. Will that mean that we get mountains of disposed nano-fiber filter bags rising up everywhere? Apparently not. The following quote from microbiology researcher Marelize Botes explains:

"What is new about this idea is the combination of inexpensive raw materials, namely activated carbon and antimicrobial nano-fibres, in point-of-use water filter systems. The nano-fibres will disintegrate in liquids after a few days and will have no environmental impact. The raw materials of the tea-bag filter are not toxic to humans."

The bottles and filters are not yet ready for mass production, and there remains the question of how to get millions of bottles and trillions of filter bags to those in need of this device, but these are small problems compared to the ones facing people without potable water.