Access to adequate water and sanitation is a major obstacle that impacts nations across the globe. Currently 1 in 10 people – or 663 million – lack access to safe water. Due to the global water crisis, more than 1.5 billion people are affected by water-related diseases every year. However, many of those disease causing organisms could be removed from water with hydrogen peroxide, but production and distribution of hydrogen peroxide is a challenge in many parts of the world that struggle with this crisis.
Now, a team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have develop a small device that can produce hydrogen peroxide with a little help from renewable energy sources (i.e. conventional solar panels).
“The idea is to develop an electrochemical cell that generates hydrogen peroxide from oxygen and water on site, and then use that hydrogen peroxide in groundwater to oxidize organic contaminants that are harmful for humans to ingest,” says Chris Hahn, a SLAC scientist.
