In developing countries, clean drinking water is not a given. According to the World Health Organization, every year, around 3.4 million people die from water-related illnesses. To put it in perspective: That’s roughly equivalent to Los Angeles’ entire population. Accessing clean water often means waiting in line for a truck to haul it to you, boiling it (an energy-hungry option) or running it through a ceramic filter (expensive). But the truth is, more often than not people don’t clean it at all.
A new project from the Water Is Life organization is looking to simplify the purification process with a high-design solution. The Drinkable Book, as it’s called, looks like something you’d keep on your coffee table, but it’s actually a full-on water purification system.
Each page is its own little filter that can clean up to 100 liters of water (that’s around a 30-day supply). This means each book can provide a single person with up to four years of clean water. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and University of Virginia developed a special kind of paper that’s coated in silver nanoparticles, which kill bacteria. “Some socks use silver nanoparticles to prevent fungus from growing on athletes’ feet,” explains chemist Theresa Dankovich, the project’s lead scientist who has been researching this process since 2008.
The Drinkable Book isn’t a water filter, exactly. While most water filters trap harmful content, the Drinkable Book works a little differently. As dirty water passes through the paper, bacteria absorbs the silver ions which causes it to die. Think of it like poison for the poison found in your water. Liquid drips through the thick paper like coffee seeps through the filter in a pour-over cup and into a box.
>So how practical is something like this? Quite, says Dankovich.
To make the paper, Dankovich soaks it in a bath of silver ions and a chemical reduction agent. From there she drains the bath and heats the paper at around 200 degrees Fahrenheit for a few minutes. After the paper is full of silver nanoparticles it gets rinsed and dried again. The result is a rust orange color you see in the book.
Making the book is clearly a science-heavy process, but last summer Brian Gartside, a designer at DDB, contacted Dankovich after finding her research online. He wanted to harness the scientist’s work and turn it into something that could be easily used in developing countries. “At the time, the whole thing was much clunkier,” Dankovich explains. “Not something you’d see in a fancy video.”
Gartside took the paper Dankovich was making and designed a system around it. In an effort to educate the people using the book, each page comes printed with guidelines and tips for safe water consumption. It's gorgeous.
So how practical is something like this? Quite, says Dankovich. First, the paper and chemicals needed to produce this is cheaper than most other water-filtration mechanisms. “It should be something that’s widely used,” she says. “It doesn’t require power and it’s very intuitive.” The team is planning to field test some form of the book later this year and are looking to have a commercially viable product ready for 2015.
