THE SEED FROM A TREE OR THE CURE TO GLOBAL THIRST?

Katie Lorimer (WHS)

A small seed, only 1cm in diameter, but it holds the roots to providing water for thousands. These seeds are obtained from the pods of the Moringa plant, native to Northern India. Moringa oleifera, also known as ‘drumstick tree’, is a rapid-growing, drought-resistant tree of the family Moringaceae. The seed can be used in a miraculous way to turn wastewater into a cleaner water suitable for drinking. The seed, when crushed, acts as a coagulant and is used as a water-soluble extract in suspension. It acts as a coagulant due to the positively charged, water-soluble proteins binding with the negatively charged impurities in the water enabling the clusters to be filtered out of the water resulting in an effective natural clarification agent for highly turbid and untreated pathogenic surface water at virtually no cost. The seeds also work on another level as an antimicrobial agent – the unprocessed seed powder may sediment over 90% of the bacteria from raw water.

In addition to improving drinkability of water, this technique reduces water turbidity making the result aesthetically as well as microbiologically more acceptable for human consumption.

Demand for water

Water is vital for survival. A billion people across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are estimated to rely on untreated surface water sources for their daily water needs. But in an ever-developing world, the usage of water is rapidly increasing and therefore the demand for water across the globe is also increasing. This resource is however becoming very limited in its pure state due to many anthropogenic means of contamination which have arisen from the industrial apocalypse of the modern day. The need for a low-cost water purification method is yearning and the Moringa seeds purification method is not only a low-cost efficient water purification method for developing countries but also has lifesaving potential due to its rapid nature – the purification process takes 1-2 hours.

Sustainability There is a broad interest in new, sustainable methods for water treatment. Many methods for waste management and treatment in rural and semi-urban parts of Africa are on-site septic tanks. Not only does this provide a breeding ground for waterborne diseases but it is also not sustainable. Septic tanks are not sustainable due to their effluent having a very high Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) which is harmful to soil fauna, as high BOD liquids strip oxygen out of the soil. However using seeds from a tree is a much more sustainable water purification method as not only does the tree remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and excrete oxygen but the seeds can remove COD, chemical oxygen demand, when purifying water which means there is more supply of oxygen hence the degree of water pollution from the effluent would be less. Unfortunately, despite its life-sustaining potential, this low-cost water purification method from the Moringa plant is still not widely known. However, from small things come greatness and the key to solving the problem of global thirst could be held in a little seed.

Bibliography

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ abs/pii/S0043135497002959 https://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/2015/02/150224082920.htm https://www.scienceinschool.org/2011/issue18/ moringa https://ysjournal.com/the-effectiveness-ofthe-use-of-moringa-oleifera-seeds-in-theremoval-of-metal-based-contaminants-fromcontaminated-water/