July 6, 2009
- Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Blackfoot - Idaho
INL solving real world problems - Part 2
By Jennifer McGraw
Across the world people are suffering from polluted water. Contaminates like arsenic and lead are poisoning drinking water and killing an estimated 2.2 million people every year. This is a problem mainly affecting those who have to find, collect and house clean drinking water.
Idaho National Laboratory scientist Mason Harrup and other scientists have been doing research for humanity and applying what they've discovered to create change. "In third world countries they have a lot of problems, not with man made contaminates, but with natural contaminates. What you could do is set up several of these barriers. If placed around a village well, it could protect that well from arsenic for years without any more expense. Without any more energy having to be put into it. And it would be a very inexpensive way to provide children with clean drinking water," says INL chemical scientist, Mason Harrup. Using plastic organic materials he was able to create a barrier that acts as an atomic strainer. Therefore straining out harmful contaminates from entering streams where people would get their drinking water from. "You've got your barrier in place and you've got the direction the water is flowing away from your contaminated site into where people would live. As the water flows through the barrier, only the bad actors are trapped out and all the good actors, all natural ground water minerals would flow right through," says Harrup. But how does this solution become a reality? "That would be by direct injection and placement," he adds. Take this test tube full of sand for example. Inject the atomic grabber solution to catch harmful contaminates. As water flows through, the grabbers will catch the contaminates, keep them in place and still allow the clean water to flow through. "What we've been able to prove, in the season experiments we've done, we've been able to stop 99.99 percent of all contaminates," he says. Ultimately this INL technology could assist in decontaminating water across the world. |
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