Turning ordinary water into a disinfectant

For his semester's project, Constant Panisset is developing a cheap, robust and portable device that can turn water into a disinfectant via the principle of plasma activated water. The device could be a solution for disinfecting hospital equipment in developing countries. He is currently investigating the possibility of sending his device into space. Imagine a cheap, robust and portable device that can turn ordinary water into a disinfectant in less than a minute. That's exactly what Constant Panisset is working on for his physics semester project at the Swiss Plasma Center in the laboratory of Ivo Furno, using the principle of plasma activated water with the added complication that the device must work in space. "I am passionate about plasma physics, and I wanted to gain experience in this field that has industrial applications," says Panisset, a Master's student at EPFL. "Plasma activated water has the potential to simplify the lives of many because it's easy to scale-up." Plasma physics is a vast field of research with already many applications, and at the outset, Panisset considered several options.