PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. (March 2, 2016) -- While working on a more durable coatings for military packaging to help Soldiers, a Picatinny materials scientist and engineer and her university collaborator innovated a way to purify water for a discovery with potential widespread benefits.
U.S. Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center materials scientist and engineer, Dr. Kimberly Anne Griswold and Seton Hall University professor Sergiu M. Gorun were experimenting with the use of various Fluorophthalocyanine-related compositions to potentially make armament packaging materials more durable and responsive to the environmental factors that weaken them.
As their work on coatings was showing improvement, they noticed via chemical analysis that, "the materials started to exhibit unique and unexpected characteristics," wrote Griswold. When exposed to visible light, they discovered that the material generates an excited form of oxygen - singlet oxygen -- which can cleave biological membranes, kill cells and attack other organic chemical bonds.
Chemically, the processes are similar to what happens in sewage treatment, U.S. Patent 9150431 explains.
It was less than a year after the initial discovery when Griswold was sitting in on a discussion held by the ARDEC International Office on technologies of interest to U.S. allies that she began to think about applying the discovery to water purification, she said. Further experimentation had already yielded a better understanding of the materials before she and Gorun began to direct their work toward a water treatment application.
"The invention has potential dual use civilian application in many parts of the world where contaminants--organic and inorganic--impact the potability of water or the availability of water," said Griswold.
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The U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center is part of the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, which has the mission to ensure decisive overmatch for unified land operations to empower the Army, the joint warfighter and our nation. RDECOM is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Materiel Command.
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U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center
Army.mil: Science and Technology News
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