Diamonds have always captured our imagination as a material for jewellery. Fewer of us are aware that engineers also consider diamonds to be an absolutely prime material with many, surprising applications. Researcher Ivan Buijnsters at TU Delft, for example, focuses on purifying water with diamonds.
‘People often think that working with diamonds is automatically expensive, but that doesn’t have to be the case at all. The cost depends primarily on the scale and the nature of the use. There actually aren’t any significant disadvantages. And that’s confirmed by the fact that water purification with diamond electrodes is already a widespread practice. For example, it’s being used in large-scale systems such as the treatment of industrial wastewater. Our main focus here is on diamond electrodes for smaller-scale applications.’
Picture of the reactor in the lab for synthesizing the diamond materials
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