In most cases, it is impossible to drink water without prior filtration and treatment - it may contain germs that are hazardous to health. There are many ways to get rid of them: from boiling and chlorination to disinfection under ultraviolet rays, but researchers from the University of New South Wales presented another option that is simpler, cheaper, and simply more interesting than others. They believe that water can be disinfected simply by passing hot bubbles with carbon dioxide through it.

The researchers propose to heat the carbon dioxide to a certain temperature so that hot bubbles released into the water can destroy the viruses with their “hot” walls. As the experiment showed, ordinary air can be used to create such bubbles, but pure carbon dioxide has shown greater efficiency.

In the course of the experiment, the researchers cleaned the water, in which bacteria of Escherichia coli and bacteriophage MS2 were added. Using different tanks, the scientists heated the gas and air to a temperature of from 7 to 205 degrees Celsius. As scientists had suggested, the ability of bubbles to kill bacteria increased in proportion to temperature. The best result was achieved at a temperature of 205 degrees, using pure carbon dioxide.

It is noteworthy that the transmission of bubbles does not greatly affect the temperature of the water itself - it remains around 55 degrees. The main advantage of this method is its low cost because it takes less energy to heat the gas than the water itself. It is also very simple when compared with UV treatment.

A small test setup for a new cleaning method has been tested on a pig farm and has shown good results.

nanonewsnet.ru