A Simple Way to Make Water Drinkable
Imagine living in a developing country like Africa. Although parts of Africa are amazing and beautiful, there are many parts of the country that have people fighting for their lives. According to World Hunger Education Service, the death of about 5 million people is due to poor nutrition and disease. Many of these illnesses that are life threatening to these people come from the water they drink. According to The Guardian, it is estimated that 5,000 children die a day and nearly 2 million children die a year from the dirty water that they drink.
The statistics of the deaths above are starting to dwindle, thanks to chemists around the world. Research has been conducted in order to find ways that water can be purified easily. There has been a newly made substance that completes the goal of purifying unclean water. The product is called the P&G water purification packet, also known as the Pur Packet. The Pur Packet is a powdered mixture of an alum compound, and a trade secret compound, that removes pathogenic microorganisms and suspended matter, causing the previously unclean water to become clean. The mixture can quickly turn 10 liters of filthy, potentially hazardous water, into clean drinkable water. Now, seeing as we know the overall basics of this mixture, let’s get into the chemistry behind it.
The Pur powder is known to create a series of chemical reactions that result in purified water. When there is a chemical reaction it means that something new is being made. The new substances being made, due to the chemical reaction that is started by the Pur packet, are insoluble compounds, meaning that these new compounds cannot dissolve in water. When you mix two solutions of different ionic compounds that are soluble compounds when individual, they can form an insoluble compound. These insoluble ionic compounds are called precipitates. The precipitates formed from the Pur bind together with themselves until forming a microscopic net. The microscopic nets are almost like chemical filters that work to trap small of dirt within the suspended water, thus making the water clearer and cleaner. The Pur Packet also contains a relatively small amount of calcium hypochlorite. Calcium hypochlorite is a chemical compound with the formula Ca(CIO)2 . It is a disinfectant similar to bleach, used to clean water. The calcium hypochlorite kills a wide range of parasites, bacteria’s, and deadly pathogens that might be in the water. The calcium hypochlorite can kill these bacterias because it contains a significant amount of chlorine. Chlorine is an ion when it is in water and it is severly reactive. Since it is so reactive, the cholrine in the calcium hypochlorite reacts with living things and kills any living thing that it encounters. In this case, it kills the living bacterias that would otherwise cause diseases. The amount of calcium hypochlorite that was added to the Pur Packet was just the right balance between being able to kill bacteria’s and parasites and being to toxic. The complete mixture kills waterborne pathogens that create cholera, typhoid and dysentery; remove a variety of toxic metals, including lead, arsenic and mercury.
The Pur Packet has been proven to completely eliminate disease-causing microorganisms, remove more than 99% of common waterborne bacteria and 99% of common waterborne viruses. It has also proven to reduce about 90% of diarrheal disease incidence in the developing world.
According to the official site of the Pur Packet ( P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water), more than 6 billion liters of clean water has been provided by many global relief organization using the Pur Packet. This amount of purified water is equivalent to giving about 8.2 million people about 2 liters of clean water a day. Some global relief organizations that use the Pur Packet are: AmeriCares, CARE, IFRC, PSI, Save the Children and World Vision. It is this sort of new technology and ideas that make me wonder just how many more amazing things can be done to help save people. It raises questions of what new technology we are going to have in the future and just how helpful those technologies will be to the human life.As technologies such as the Pur Packet continue to unfold, millions of lives will be saved in developing countries like Africa. It is these sort of new discoveries that bring hope to the people that are struggling and that bring life to those who were expected to die.
Sources:
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/nov/10/water.environment
http://www.csdw.org/csdw/pur-packet-technology.shtml
http://www.pg.com/pur_packet.shtml
http://www.purwater.com/water/why-pur-water/why-pur/part-of-the-solution/
http://acswebcontent.acs.org/iyckit/booklets/L3_PURPacket.pdf
http://chemistry.about.com/od/moleculescompounds/f/What-Is-Alum.htm
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question189.htm
Imagine living in a developing country like Africa. Although parts of Africa are amazing and beautiful, there are many parts of the country that have people fighting for their lives. According to World Hunger Education Service, the death of about 5 million people is due to poor nutrition and disease. Many of these illnesses that are life threatening to these people come from the water they drink. According to The Guardian, it is estimated that 5,000 children die a day and nearly 2 million children die a year from the dirty water that they drink.
The statistics of the deaths above are starting to dwindle, thanks to chemists around the world. Research has been conducted in order to find ways that water can be purified easily. There has been a newly made substance that completes the goal of purifying unclean water. The product is called the P&G water purification packet, also known as the Pur Packet. The Pur Packet is a powdered mixture of an alum compound, and a trade secret compound, that removes pathogenic microorganisms and suspended matter, causing the previously unclean water to become clean. The mixture can quickly turn 10 liters of filthy, potentially hazardous water, into clean drinkable water. Now, seeing as we know the overall basics of this mixture, let’s get into the chemistry behind it.
The Pur powder is known to create a series of chemical reactions that result in purified water. When there is a chemical reaction it means that something new is being made. The new substances being made, due to the chemical reaction that is started by the Pur packet, are insoluble compounds, meaning that these new compounds cannot dissolve in water. When you mix two solutions of different ionic compounds that are soluble compounds when individual, they can form an insoluble compound. These insoluble ionic compounds are called precipitates. The precipitates formed from the Pur bind together with themselves until forming a microscopic net. The microscopic nets are almost like chemical filters that work to trap small of dirt within the suspended water, thus making the water clearer and cleaner. The Pur Packet also contains a relatively small amount of calcium hypochlorite. Calcium hypochlorite is a chemical compound with the formula Ca(CIO)2 . It is a disinfectant similar to bleach, used to clean water. The calcium hypochlorite kills a wide range of parasites, bacteria’s, and deadly pathogens that might be in the water. The calcium hypochlorite can kill these bacterias because it contains a significant amount of chlorine. Chlorine is an ion when it is in water and it is severly reactive. Since it is so reactive, the cholrine in the calcium hypochlorite reacts with living things and kills any living thing that it encounters. In this case, it kills the living bacterias that would otherwise cause diseases. The amount of calcium hypochlorite that was added to the Pur Packet was just the right balance between being able to kill bacteria’s and parasites and being to toxic. The complete mixture kills waterborne pathogens that create cholera, typhoid and dysentery; remove a variety of toxic metals, including lead, arsenic and mercury.
The Pur Packet has been proven to completely eliminate disease-causing microorganisms, remove more than 99% of common waterborne bacteria and 99% of common waterborne viruses. It has also proven to reduce about 90% of diarrheal disease incidence in the developing world.
According to the official site of the Pur Packet ( P&G Children’s Safe Drinking Water), more than 6 billion liters of clean water has been provided by many global relief organization using the Pur Packet. This amount of purified water is equivalent to giving about 8.2 million people about 2 liters of clean water a day. Some global relief organizations that use the Pur Packet are: AmeriCares, CARE, IFRC, PSI, Save the Children and World Vision. It is this sort of new technology and ideas that make me wonder just how many more amazing things can be done to help save people. It raises questions of what new technology we are going to have in the future and just how helpful those technologies will be to the human life.As technologies such as the Pur Packet continue to unfold, millions of lives will be saved in developing countries like Africa. It is these sort of new discoveries that bring hope to the people that are struggling and that bring life to those who were expected to die.
Sources:
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/nov/10/water.environment
http://www.csdw.org/csdw/pur-packet-technology.shtml
http://www.pg.com/pur_packet.shtml
http://www.purwater.com/water/why-pur-water/why-pur/part-of-the-solution/
http://acswebcontent.acs.org/iyckit/booklets/L3_PURPacket.pdf
http://chemistry.about.com/od/moleculescompounds/f/What-Is-Alum.htm
http://www.howstuffworks.com/question189.htm