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Panasonic Uses New Photocatalyst to Purify Water
Green Technology Featured Articles
August 09, 2013

Panasonic Uses New Photocatalyst to Purify Water

By Frank Griffin
TMCnet Contributing Writer

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), water-related diseases are the leading cause of death around the world, responsible for the lives of more than 3.4 million people annually. The vast majority of the victims are young children who die from the illnesses caused by organisms and raw sewage contaminating water supplies.


Estimates put close to half the population of the developing world as suffering from some form of waterborne disease. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some of the diseases include: Amebiasis, Cholera, Dracunculiasis (guinea-worm disease), Leptospirosis, Shigellosis, Typhoid Fever as well as sanitation and hygiene related diseases and vector or insect-borne diseases associated with water.

Water contamination doesn't only affect developing countries. Increasingly the water supply around the world is contaminated with salt, bacteria, organic toxins and toxic metals. The process of purifying the water is becoming more difficult requiring resource intensive processes. While there are many new and innovative ways to purify virtually any liquid form, the solution has to be cost effective and practical so it can have applications to take care of the needs of a large population.

The new Panasonic water purification system uses a photocatalyst that doesn't have to be fixed to a panel or filter. The system runs on solar power using the ultraviolet part of the spectrum, and uses titanium dioxide in a nanoparticle form combined with zeolite micro-particles as a catalyst.

The process involves mixing the two particles in contaminated water, which causes them to bond to one another. When the ultraviolet rays from the sun activate the titanium dioxide, it sequesters toxins in the zeolite matrix. The weight of the contaminants causes some to sink to the bottom, allowing the clean water to be skimmed from the top.

This process reduces the amount of time it takes to remove contaminants because the photocatalyst is dispersed throughout the water. Filtration systems that use a fixed photocatalyst having limited contact with the contaminants, increasing the time it takes to purify the water. The Panasonic (News - Alert) system removed arsenic from contaminated water 50 times faster than typical installation in one test using the power of the sun.

Technical specifications of the system according to Panasonic include:

  • The separation rate of the particulate synthetic photocatalyst from water is optimized by means of the designing of surface physicochemical properties of the photocatalyst.
  • The photocatalyst possesses a large surface-area-to-volume ratio, which contributes the efficient detoxification of the harmful pollutants. Throughput of water treatment is thoroughly enhanced by this photocatalyst incorporated in the slurry photocatalytic water treatment technology, by 50 times in the case of arsenic pollutants and by 100 times in the case of persistent organic materials.
  • Solar UV light is utilized as a light source for the slurry photocatalytic water treatment technology, making a low cost and environmentally friendly treatment system.

This development is based on the following new technologies:

  • Synthesis technology of the photocatalyst by utilizing the inherent electrostatic interaction between two particles
  • Slurry technology to control the transition between the particulate photocatalyst aggregation and the suspension.

Part of this technology has been demonstrated in the joint research subjects with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. Panasonic, along with Jadavpur University's project in India, will test a prototype using this system in October 2013. Panasonic holds 10 Japanese patents and six overseas patents, including pending applications, for this development.




Edited by Alisen Downey


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