MIT engineers create sapwood water filters removing bacteria and viruses
Technology
MIT engineers have come up with a clever way to make water filters out of sapwood, the stuff inside trees like pine and ginkgo.
These natural filters use the tree's own structure to trap bacteria and viruses, helping reduce contamination in water by removing bacteria and viruses.
It's a low-cost idea that could help people in places where clean water is tough to find.
MIT aims to scale sapwood filters
The team tested these filters in India, using local pine trees to purify about 1-liter of water per hour.
Over two years, they worked with more than 1,000 people to make the system easier and cheaper.
Now, MIT hopes to scale up production so even more communities can get water filtered to remove more than 99% of E. coli and rotavirus straight from nature.