The Goldsmith Lab
  • Home
  • People
  • Ecology & Education
  • Publications
  • Thoughts

A Place For Occasional Thoughts

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Drinking water: plants as cheap, efficient and effective filters?

3/3/2014

39 Comments

 
Picture
Peel off the bark of your nearest pine tree, fasten it to a source of dirty water, and wait for the clean water to come out the other side. 

Providing a simple, cheap, and sustainable method for filtering dirty water is that simple, according to a new study published this week in PLoS ONE. The study demonstrates that a 2 cm long piece of branch with a 1 cm diameter can filter 99.9% of the E. coli out of a water sample and that each segment could be effective for a few liters a day. Not surprisingly, it needs to be fresh branch wood, not dried.

Picture
The plant's xylem, and more specifically the torus-margo pit membrane,  is responsible for all of the action. Xylem is the series of tubes that water travels through in a branch --- torus-margo pits are tiny closable valves between tubes. The interesting thing about the torus-margo pits is that they have the appearance of a spiderweb, with a pancake in the middle (the best description I can come up with...), and that spiderweb is where all of the E. coli is captured. Torus-margo pits serve a vital function in the plants, when there is not enough water the spiderweb flexes so that the pancake presses against the connection between the two tubes, effectively isolating one (empty) tube from another (full tube). It's very cool to consider another possible function, albeit totally unintended, for this anatomical feature. 

It's clear that this paper is a proof of concept and that a lot of work remains to be done. The authors, all mechanical engineers at MIT, did an admirable job of teaching themselves about xylem...I wonder how these efforts could be advanced more rapidly with some help from the plant ecophysiologists among us. Nevertheless, my understanding is that cheap and efficient water filters are something of a holy grail...nearly 1 billion people still do not have access to clean water. Imagine the possibilities this could inspire...
Torus-margo pit. The torus is the valve (pancake) in the center and the margo is the membrane (spiderweb). From Choat et al. (2008). 

Boutilier et al. 2014. Water filtration using plant xylem. PLoS ONE 9(2): e89934. 

39 Comments

    Archives

    November 2024
    October 2024
    July 2024
    November 2023
    August 2023
    May 2023
    February 2023
    September 2022
    July 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    August 2021
    May 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    August 2020
    July 2019
    March 2019
    November 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    August 2015
    July 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    November 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013

    Categories

    All
    Altmetrics
    Amazon
    Clean Water
    Conservation
    Deforestation
    Ecohydrology
    Google Trends
    Meteorology
    Plant Ecophysiology
    Science Communication
    Smartphones
    Stable Isotopes
    Technology And Innovation
    Tropical Ecology

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.