NASA Testing Breakthrough In Water Safety
Photo courtesy of Science Daily/NASA
The water--collected in sealed plastic bags--is passed over a half-inch-diameter, polymer, porous-membrane disk. Known as a "solid phase extraction membranes," the disk captures either iodine or silver depending on the chemical treatment.
The disk is places against the German-made "reflectance spectrometer," which reads the disks color in a matter of seconds. The device weighs about a pound and runs on AA batteries.
Photo courtesy of Science Daily/NASA
For the iodine test the disk is impregnated with PVP (polyvinylpyrrolidone)--a nontoxic chemical found in contact lens cleaning solution. For silver, the disk is imbued with DMABR which is short for 5-(dimethylaminobenzylidene)rhodanine.
Yellow indicates no silver and a fleshy-pink means it is present.
Source: Science Daily
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