Water is most important substance for the meaning of Life in a planet. But seventy percent water and remaining thirty percent land surrounded Earth has only 2.5% fresh water which is drinkable. So, it can be said that Earth contained very less amount of drinkable water comparably the population hike.
So it's important to draw our attention to reduce the waste of water. In this regard, recycling of water is one of the best ways to reduce the wastage. There are several ways, but lot amount of water wasted through the drainage system. So there are several purification plant build which purifies this waste water and used in different industrial purpose.
But recycling that water through purification plant is more expensive as well as time-consuming. So, Chemists from Australian National University are developing a self-purification system by using photocatalyst which rapidly purifies the waste water in presence of direct sunlight. According to Phys, the researcher uses modified titanium dioxide as a photocatalyst.
Prof. Yun Liu, team leader from ANU stated that this new technique is fifteen times more efficient than any leading commercialized purification systems and also very cheap as they used photocatalyst with natural sunlight for purification mechanism instead of using UV ray in commercial products.
Our photocatalyst can completely decompose organic pollutants in wastewater in twenty minutes, compared with the leading commercialized products which take one hour to decompose only twenty-six percent of the same pollutants, said Prof. Yun. The comprehensive research analysis about this new technique published in a scientific journal called, Advance material.
Regarding a detailed study, researchers are tried to modify the process where they reconstruct titanium dioxide combined with nitrogen and niobium ions which improved the performance of the photocatalyst. This new technique could be useful for treating the water for human consumption as well as convenient for some prospective application in self-cleaning building material like glass, splitting water to make hydrogen fuel.
Photocatalyst can also be used to accelerate the chemical reaction in industrial processes like automotive, construction as well as medical sector also. The whole research conducted by ANU, collaborating with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of New South Wales, Western Sydney University, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization.
