To turn dirty lakewater into drinkable H2O, peel away the bark from a nearby tree branch and slowly pour water through the wood. According to new research, this neat, low-tech trick ought to trap any bacteria, leaving you with uncontaminated water. Okay, time for a little tree physiology. To get water and minerals up a tree, wood is comprised of xylem, porous tissue arranged in tubes for conducing sap from the roots upwards through a system of vessels and pores. Xylem tissue is found in sapwood, the younger wood that lies in concentric circles between the central heartwood and the bark. Tiny pores called pit membranes are scattered throughout the walls of the vessels, allowing sap to flow from one vessel to another, feeding various structures along a tree’s length. Turns out, the same tissue that evolved to transport sap up the length of a tree also has exactly the right-sized pores to allow water through while blocking bacteria. Additionally, the pores also trap air bubbles, which could kill a tree if spread in the xylem. “Plants have had to figure out how to filter out bubbles but allow easy flow of sap,” study author Rohit Karnik from MIT says in a news release. “It’s the same problem with water filtration where we want to filter out microbes but maintain a high flow rate. So it’s a nice coincidence that the problems are similar.” Read more at iflscience/environment/simple-tree-branch-filter-makes-dirty-water-drinkable#twEtelUr8DMvVW8u.99
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 15:26:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015