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Purifying Your Water with Burnt Wood- Latest News

“Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink,” as the old saying goes. A more apt statement for these times might be, “water, water everywhere, but is it safe to drink?” And if it’s not, what is a reliable water purification process?

Engineers at the University of Maryland have now found that porous types of wood from trees like poplar and pine can greatly increase the efficiency of water-to-steam conversion under sunlight.

Their findings could be used in a simple and inexpensive biodegradable device for water purification.

Purifying Your Water with Burnt Wood- Latest News
The solar steam generation testing rig that was used in the study

I think there are many, many materials that can be used in solar steam generation, but wood really stands out in terms of performance as well as cost,” says senior author Liangbing Hu, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in the A. James Clark School of Engineering and the University of Maryland Energy Innovation Institute.

While different materials can be used, including graphite and copper nanotubes, Hu and his team found wood to be effective–but not all types of wood are equal. Of the species they evaluated, the more porous types

like pine and poplar were most efficient. They observed that denser species, like the tropical hardwood cocobolo, generate steam at a slower rate since they have fewer pores through which water can travel.

The team tested the solar steam generation efficiency of wood blocks with a range of densities, each the size of the palm of a hand and only 1 or 2 mm thick. To darken the wood so it could better absorb heat from the sun, they carbonized (burned) the top of each block, and then they measured the rate at which water traveling through the wood was converted into steam.

They found that elements of the wood’s structure helped facilitate the process efficiently, with microscopic pores and larger channels allowing water to flow quickly and continuously to the sun-heated surface.

Hu believes that porous wood has the potential to generate freshwater on a large scale sometime in the near future. He envisions wooden solar steam generation devices being used in water treatment plants across regions with plenty of saltwater and sunshine, from California to Singapore to Saudi Arabia.

We are trying to push this technology further for use as a product, eventually, for addressing water issues with high efficiency,” Hu says.

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