A new use for wood has been discovered by engineers and that is to filter water. The engineers added nano-particles to wood and further made use of it for filtering toxic dyes from water.

The engineers at the University of Maryland took their first step with a block of linden wood. They then soaked the block in palladium which is a metal used for removing pollutants from the exhaust in cars’ catalytic converters. Palladium further bonded to the dye particles.

This process resulted in allowing the water to flow from wood past the nanoparticles in order to eradicate the toxic dye particles more effectively. The liquid which was tinted with methylene blue then gradually trickled through the wood and came out clean, reported Science Daily.

“We are currently working on using a wood filter to remove heavy metals, such as lead and copper, from water. We are also interested in scaling up the technology for real industry applications,” informed the lead researcher, Liangbing Hu.

The reason for this research was to examine wood through an engineering lens. Instead of contrasting the filters with the rest, the researchers wanted to show that the wood is able to remove impurities.

According to Amy Gong, the co-first author of the research stated, “This could be used in areas where wastewater contains toxic dye particles.”

This research was published in ACS Nano and is a proof of the most recent inventive purpose of wood.

Siddhartha Das who helped with the experiment said, “We found that the wood's channels are actually slightly bent, and they are connected by pores, which slightly increase the time that the water is in contact with the wood,” reported Phys.org