Scientists find a potential new use for old music CDs:
coating disks in photocatalytic compounds and spinning them to clean water
Audio CDs, all the rage in the ‘90s, seem increasingly
obsolete in a world of MP3 files and iPods, leaving many music lovers with the
question of what to do with their extensive compact disk collections. While you
could turn your old disks into a work of avant-garde art, researchers in Taiwan
have come up with a more practical application: breaking down sewage. The team
will present its new wastewater treatment device at the Optical Society's (OSA)
Annual Meeting, Frontiers in Optics (FiO) 2013, being held Oct. 6-10 in
Orlando, Fla.
“Optical disks are cheap, readily available, and very
commonly used,” says Din Ping Tsai, a physicist at National Taiwan University.
Close to 20 billion disks are already manufactured annually, the researchers
note, so using old disks for water treatment might even be a way to cut down on
waste.