Panasonic Unveils Speedy Clean Water Tech

Panasonic, the electronics company, has introduced new water technology that it says could benefit people around the world.

The machine is a photocatalytic water purification technology, and its selling point is how quickly it can purify polluted water. The technology makes use of UV rays.

"The processes have two core technological developments including achieving a high capacity to decompose toxic substances with synthesis technology of photocatalysts; and achieving high processing speeds with water purification technology that disperses photocatalytic materials," Trade Arabia News Service reported.

Panasonic uses titanium dioxide (TiO2) as a photocatalyst, "distributed in extremely fine particles. When exposed to ultraviolet rays, the photocatalyst forms reactive oxygen molecules to bind the contaminants," according to Engineering & Technology.

"When the novel photocatalytic particles are stirred, TiO2 is released from the zeolite and dispersed throughout the water. As a result, reaction speed is much faster than other methods of fixing TiO2 on the surface of substrates, and a larger volume of water can be processed in a short amount of time. If the water is left still, it will cause TiO2 to bind to zeolite again, making it easy to separate and recover the photocatalysts from the water so they can be used again later," GizMag reported.

This method has been attempted in the past, but problems often emerged.

"Though highly efficient, the method was previously considered impractical due to the difficulty in subsequent removal of such tiny grains from the cleaned water. However, Panasonic designed an improvement in the system...Unlike other approaches, this technique doesn’t reduce the activity of the titanium oxide particles," the report said.

The technology was debuted at the recent Eco Products trade show in Japan, according to Engineering & Technology.

Panasonic is trying to keep costs low, according to Trade Arabia News Service.

The company "aims to provide this water to small rural communities, using trucks equipped with photocatalytic water purification systems. Beyond this, the company is looking at linking up with local water supply operators to establish water purification facilities, and is also considering the licensing of this technology to businesses," the report said.