WHAT WE STAND FOR
OUR EXPERTISE
PROJECT SUN WATER
IN SHORT
CLEAN
PHOTON
GETTING DRINKING WATER
Cleaning polluted water through filters and photocatalyst particles.
CHALLENGES
IN CLEANING DRINKING WATER
Global climate change leads, among other things, to the drying up of springs and a lowering of the groundwater level, thus to water scarcity. We are also experiencing increasing industrial and agricultural contamination of water. The health of large sections of the population depends more and more on purified water.
Many methods are in use to achieve this goal, such as microfilters, chlorination, evaporation and recondensation, disinfection by using the UV component of solar radiation and UV-permeable containers (PET bottles, SODIS). All of these methods work, but have the disadvantage of requiring either complex equipment or being highly time and weather dependent.
The “Clean Photon” system developed by the Hella Boccara Initiative uses natural sunlight like SODIS, but it also uses photocatalysts to convert a large part of the light spectrum and quickly destroy bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms.
THE CONCEPT
OF THE CLEAN PHOTON
The ‘Clean Photon’ light reactor essentially consists of a flat container filled with the water to be sterilized. A special photocatalyst reacting with light creates free OH radicals which eliminate all pollutants.
HOW TO
A STEP BY STEP DISCRIPTION
Polluted water flows through a pre-filter into the container. The pre-filter holds back particles and thus eliminates the turbidity in the water.
The side of the container, which is facing the sun, is covered by an extremely durable fluoropolymer membrane that is transparent to the entire solar spectrum.
Inside the container light-directing lamellas are partially coated with our special photocatalyst. The lamellas guide the light in a zigzag through the water and the photocatalyst particles fixed on defined places of the lamellas interact with the light and create highly reactive OH radicals. Viruses, bacteria and other micro-organisms are killed by the combined attack of light and radicals.
After this process, the water that comes out is drinking water.
Functioning demonstration units of the Clean Photon can be found at the TTT-Center in Portugal.