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Walking-induced electrostatic charges enable in situ electroporated disinfection in portable water bottles

Nature Water volume 2, pages 360–369 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Direct in situ disinfection in portable water bottles could serve as the last line of defence for ensuring safe drinking water, especially in rural and disaster-stricken areas. However, limited disinfection technologies are available for this decentralized application due to the requirements of chemical inputs, a reliable energy supply and/or complicated modular constructions. Here we realized efficient in situ disinfection in a portable water bottle by directly harvesting the electrostatic charges induced by walking to stimulate electroporation. We fabricated a flexible non-metallic polypyrrole electrode with densely and uniformly distributed nanorods through nanopatterning and pasted it into a compact water bottle. Walking-induced electrostatic charges on the body surface can flow through a low-resistance path and accumulate on the nanorod tips to enhance local electric fields. These accumulated charges are sufficient to stimulate electroporation to realize the complete disinfection (>99.9999% inactivation) of a broad spectrum of microorganisms in a 500-ml water bottle within 10 minutes of walking.

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Fig. 1: Concept of the WEED method.
Fig. 2: Electrical output and disinfection performance of the WEED method.
Fig. 3: Investigation of the mechanism of the WEED process.
Fig. 4: Disinfection performance of the handheld WEED bottle.

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Data availability

The data supporting the findings of this study are available within this paper and the Supplementary Information. Other relevant data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2022YFC3205400, Z.-Y.H.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 52200079, Z.-Y.H.), and the Basic Science Research Program (grant no. 2022R1A3B1078291, Research Leader Program, S.-W.K.) through National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grants funded by the Korean government (MSIT). S.-W.K. acknowledges the Yonsei Fellow Program funded by L. Y. Jae.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Young-Jun Kim, Zheng-Yang Huo, Xiaoxiong Wang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Suwon, Republic of Korea

    Young-Jun Kim, In-Yong Suh, Joon-Ha Hwang, Youngwook Chung & Hyeon Yeong Lee

  2. Center for Human-Oriented Triboelectric Energy Harvesting, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Young-Jun Kim, Dong-Min Lee, In-Yong Suh, Hyeon Yeong Lee & Sang-Woo Kim

  3. School of Environment and Natural Resources, Renmin University of China, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Zheng-Yang Huo & Haojie Dai

  4. Institute for Ocean Engineering, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoxiong Wang

  5. Center of Double Helix, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaoxiong Wang

  6. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Dong-Min Lee & Sang-Woo Kim

  7. Research and Development Center, Energymining, Suwon, Republic of Korea

    Joon-Ha Hwang & Youngwook Chung

  8. College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China

    Ye Du

  9. Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

    Wenbo Ding

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Contributions

Z.-Y.H., S.-W.K. and X.W. developed the concept. Y.-J.K., Z.-Y.H. and H.D. synthesized the samples and conducted the disinfection measurements and material characterization. Y.-J.K., I.-Y.S., J.-H.H. and Y.C. fabricated the disinfection system and conducted the electrical measurements. D.-M.L. and H.Y.L. performed the electric field simulation. Y.-J.K., Z.-Y.H., X.W. and S.-W.K. analysed the data and co-wrote the paper. W.D., X.W. and Y.D. provided important experimental insights. All of the authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zheng-Yang Huo or Sang-Woo Kim.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Water thanks Zong-Hong Lin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Electrical characterization of applying the WEED method.

a Schematic illustrating the method for measuring electrostatic charges induced by walking. b Electrical output (current and voltage) of the handheld electrode at a fixed step rate (0.5 Hz). c Electrical output (current and voltage) of the handheld electrode at different step rates of 1, 1.5, and 2 Hz. d-e Current and power density at a fixed step rate of (d) 1 and (e) 2 Hz as a function of electrical impedance (105 – 109 Ω).

Extended Data Fig. 2 Investigation of the disinfection mechanism of the WEED method.

a Membrane permeability of bacteria before and after electroporation. b Effect of chemical oxidation on the disinfection performance. Scavengers of isopropanol (IPA) and benzoquinone (BQ) were used to evaluate the effects of ·OH and ·O2−. c Change in intracellular oxidative stress of bacteria caused by the potential physiological change transfer. H2O2 (0.1 mM) was added to the bacteria sample as the positive control group. d Effect of temperature on disinfection. Experiments were conducted in the disinfection demonstrator with a 10 mM PBS buffer at pH 7.0. Flow rate and step rate were fixed at 5 mL/min and 1 Hz, respectively. Dashed lines indicate that all microorganisms were inactivated (that is, live microorganisms were not detected). In a, c, and d, error bars represent the standard deviation (SD, n = 3) and data are presented as mean values + /- SD.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Photographs related to the handheld WEED bottle.

a Photographs of the experimental setup for measuring the walking-induced electrostatic charges. b Photographs of the WEED bottle containing 500 mL of water. The proposed device consists of an aluminum foil (2 cm × 2 cm) on the outer surface of the bottle and four parallel nanorod-modified PPy electrodes (4 cm × 15 cm each) attached to stable acrylic supports and connected to the aluminum foil by copper wire.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–15 and Tables 1–5.

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

Measuring charges transferred to hands during walking.

Supplementary Video 2

Application of a handheld WEED bottle for water disinfection.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Electrical output and disinfection performance.

Source Data Fig. 3

Raman measurement, fluorescence intensity and disinfection investigation.

Source Data Fig. 4

Disinfection performance in real conditions and total organic carbon measurement.

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Kim, YJ., Huo, ZY., Wang, X. et al. Walking-induced electrostatic charges enable in situ electroporated disinfection in portable water bottles. Nat Water 2, 360–369 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00226-5

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