Research Found Corn Helps Achieve Cleaner Water

(Newswire.net — November 17, 2021) Orlando, FL — Researchers have long been carrying out studies to investigate the various pollutants affecting water. There have also been studies that looked into the remedies helpful for water cleansing. 

A new paper by engineers at UC Riverside has shown that activated charcoal produced from corn stover worked in filtering 98 percent of pollutants from water. 

According to experts, corn is the top agricultural crop in the United States nonetheless is also one of the most wasteful. Around half of the harvest, particularly its husks, leaves, stalks, and cobs, remains as waste, and this is after the kernels have been stripped from the cobs. 

It is worth noting that corn stover or the leftovers actually have some commercial or industrial uses aside from burning. 

This new paper describes an energy-efficient technique to place corn stover back into the economy. This can be done by transforming it into activated carbon for use in water treatment.

This charred biological material called activated charcoal or activated carbon has been treated to produce millions of microscopic pores. Such pores actually increase how much their highly porous surface can absorb.  

Experts have long said that it has a number of industrial uses, and the most common is water filtration. 

There’s a lab devoted to placing pernicious waste products like plastic and plant waste called biomass back into the economy through upcycling them into useful, valuable commodities. 

Kandis Leslie Abdul-Aziz, an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering runs the lab.

“I believe that as engineers we should take the lead in creating approaches that convert waste into high-value materials, fuels, and chemicals, which will create new value streams and eliminate the environmental harm that comes from today’s take-make-dispose model,” Abdul-Aziz said.

More studies are still being carried out to explore the healing goodness of activated charcoal. It is worth keeping in mind that this remedy is linked with a myriad of health benefits.

Carbon-rich materials like peat, wood, sawdust, or coconut shells are heated at extremely high temperatures to produce activated charcoal. This is called the activation process that leaves the charcoal with a highly porous surface capable of adsorbing atoms, molecules, or ions. 

Today, it is widely resorted to through supplementation such as the use of Divine Bounty Activated Charcoal. It is known for its high potency and purity and is even made carefully in an FDA-inspected facility in the U.S. (https://www.amazon.com/Organic-Activated-Charcoal-Capsules-Whitening/dp/B071NZ5G56)