New Water Disinfection Method Kills Bacteria Using Electricity

Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering discovered a new way of disinfecting water using a locally enhanced electric field (LEEFT) that directly zaps bacteria in nanoseconds.

Carlton S. Wilder Assistant Professor Xing Xie, with postdoctoral researcher Ting Wang, took cues from conventional electric field treatment (CEFT) commonly used in food pasteurization when creating LEEFT. It features electrodes with gold nanotips that allow electric pulses to instantly and quickly travel to the membrane and kill the bacteria.

“This ultra-fast bacteria inactivation just using the nanosecond pulses is a surprise because, theoretically, nanosecond pulses are just too short to kill the bacteria in conventional electric field treatment because the membrane takes time to charge. But with LEEFT’s nanowedges and nanostructures, the bacteria cells can be charged directly by the nanometal, quickly disinfecting water,” Wang said.

To evaluate LEEFT’s efficiency, they applied gold nanowedges on the electrode edge of a chip, to which they added the Staphylococcus bacteria. Applying 40 kilovolts of electricity per centimeter for 200 seconds successfully eliminated the bacteria.

Read the full article here to learn more about this new ultrafast and environmentally friendly water disinfection method.

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