Purifying water with light

Purifying water has been a dirty process using filters, membranes, cleaning chemicals and mercurcy lamps. The systems in use today waste most of the water they're trying to purify, and require a lot of electricity. With reverse osmosis systems, for example, about 80% of the water that could be purified goes out into the sewer.

Puralytics use LEDs to illuminate a nanotechnology coating they've developed, that's on a mesh where the water flows through a main system. This technology is not filtering at all. What it is doing instead, is creating a chemical reaction that causes molecules to break apart and break down in the water.

The right wavelengths of light and this nanotechnology coating cause five photochemical processes that work to pull contaminants out of the water onto the surface of the mesh, then dump the energy of what's been absorbed into the molecules to break them apart.

Most organic molecules are lots of carbons, hydrogens, and oxygen and a few other things. Essentially they break a long molecule apart, all the way down, and reform it as CO2 and water and minerals. They actively destroy contaminants in the water, but leave the minerals that are good for you in it. Other treatments take out minerals that are good for you.

Source: techcrunch.comAdded: 21 December 2010