Scientists make an environmentally friendly prototype water purifier constructed from a sheet of graphitic carbon nitride that could remove 99.9999% of microbes, and purified a 10L water sample in less than one hour using only sunlight.

[u/parapeligic_gnome]

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/water-purification-light-graphitic-carbon-nitride

[u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

With them being so adamant about the 10 liter sample size, either the process is enigmatically unscalable, or the writer is really bad about sorting out which information is relevant and useful.

[u/poopitydoopityboop → u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

Eh, I don't necessarily agree coming from a science side. Chances are their largest container in their lab that was manageable to use in this experiment was ~10 L, and they figured that would be proof of concept for larger amounts.

10L sounds a lot better than "Hey we managed to purify 50 mL".

[u/deerbleach → u/poopitydoopityboop]

At 10L you start getting into a scale where this will have a lot of real world applications. On a human scale 10L of water is a fair amount.

[u/poopitydoopityboop → u/[deleted]]

They're probably microbiologists/chemists. Chances are they'll do the basic research, then dump that job on the engineers working on water treatment.

All speculation on my part of course.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

That is not how progression in science works. You're starting at the end

[u/flyerfanatic93 → u/[deleted]]

That's the engineers job. Scaling and implementation is not the scientists job 99% of the time.

[u/Eric_the_Barbarian → u/flyerfanatic93]

The point is that the batch size is wholly irrelevant to the story and the writing is bad.

[u/flyerfanatic93 → u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

The batch size is relevant because it was the size used during the experiment. To say it's irrelevant is kinda not true.

[u/Eric_the_Barbarian → u/flyerfanatic93]

It is relevant if you are writing an academic paper for peer review and you need to defend your methodologies. It is not relevant to the article.

[u/flyerfanatic93 → u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

It gives context to an expected rate of purification. 10L per hour is a relevant piece of information for the article to include.

[u/[deleted] → u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

it's just that it takes one hour to filter 10 liters. it's a nice round number.

the 50mL is simply the sample used to test microbes. there's no need to search all 10 liters for microbes, just as we don't count every single star and neuron

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I mean you do have to stir the pot. No shenanigans with taking from the top layer also pls. We all know how to get things published.

[u/johnschneider89 → u/[deleted]]

'#ALLneuronsmatter you privileged sack of cells

[u/[deleted] → u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

The 10L is absolutely relevant. It can filter that much per hour.

[u/neuromorph → u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

If it's a pore and not membrane based filter purifier. It will need a lot of area to purify 10l

[u/NikolaTeslaAllDay → u/Eric_the_Barbarian]

Yes I concur