Low-cost, local production of a safe and effective disinfectant for resource-constrained communities

Andrea Naranjo-Soledad; Logan Smesrud; Siva R S Bandaru; Dana Hernandez; Meire Mehare; Sara Mahmoud; Vijay Matange; Bakul Rao; Chandana N; Paige Balcom; David Olugbenga Omole; César Álvarez-Mejía; Varinia López-Ramrez; Ashok Gadgil

doi:10.1371/journal.pgph.0002213

Low-cost, local production of a safe and effective disinfectant for resource-constrained communities

PLOS Glob Public Health. 2024 Jun 25;4(6):e0002213. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0002213. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Andrea Naranjo-Soledad¹, Logan Smesrud¹, Siva R S Bandaru¹, Dana Hernandez^{1

2}, Meire Mehare³, Sara Mahmoud¹, Vijay Matange⁴, Bakul Rao⁵, Chandana N⁶, Paige Balcom^{7

8}, David Olugbenga Omole^{9

10}, César Álvarez-Mejía¹¹, Varinia López-Ramrez¹², Ashok Gadgil¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
² The Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
³ Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
⁴ VINYAS Architects, Urban Designers, Landscape Architects, Delhi, India.
⁵ Centre for Technology Alternatives for Rural Areas, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
⁶ Centre for Emerging Technologies for Sustainable Development, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India.
⁷ Engineering R&D, Takataka Plastics, Gulu, Uganda.
⁸ Biosystems Engineering, Gulu University, Gulu, Uganda.
⁹ Department of Civil Engineering, Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria.
¹⁰ School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
¹¹ Department of Environmental Engineering, Tecnológico Nacional de México, ITS de Abasolo, Abasolo, Guanajuato, Mexico.
¹² Department of Biochemical Engineering, Tecnológico Nacional de México/ITS de Irapuato, Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico.

Abstract

Improved hygiene depends on the accessibility and availability of effective disinfectant solutions. These disinfectant solutions are unavailable to many communities worldwide due to resource limitations, among other constraints. Safe and effective chlorine-based disinfectants can be produced via simple electrolysis of salt water, providing a low-cost and reliable option for on-site, local production of disinfectant solutions to improve sanitation and hygiene. This study reports on a system (herein called "Electro-Clean") that can produce concentrated solutions of hypochlorous acid (HOCl) using readily available, low-cost materials. With just table salt, water, graphite welding rods, and a DC power supply, the Electro-Clean system can safely produce HOCl solutions (~1.5 liters) of up to 0.1% free chlorine (i.e.,1000 ppm) in less than two hours at low potential (5 V DC) and modest current (~5 A). Rigorous testing of free chlorine production and durability of the Electro-Clean system components, described here, has been verified to work in multiple locations around the world, including microbiological tests conducted in India and Mexico to confirm the biocidal efficacy of the Electro-Clean solution as a surface disinfectant. Cost estimates are provided for making HOCl locally with this method in the USA, India, and Mexico. Findings indicate that Electro-Clean is an affordable alternative to off-the-shelf commercial chlorinator systems in terms of first costs (or capital costs), and cost-competitive relative to the unit cost of the disinfectant produced. By minimizing dependence on supply chains and allowing for local production, the Electro-Clean system has the potential to improve public health by addressing the need for disinfectant solutions in resource-constrained communities.

Copyright: © 2024 Naranjo-Soledad et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Grants and funding

There was partial financial support for this work from the Balaton Group, and Rudd Chair funds from Professor Ashok Gadgil. The Higher Technological Institutes of Abasolo and Irapuato provided additional financial support for the work described in Mexico. The NSF GRFP funded the graduate studies of authors Andrea Naranjo-Soledad and Dana Hernandez at UC Berkeley. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.