purification

Do new water technologies stand a chance?

BOSTON--It's a business with extremely risk-averse customers that have little money spend. On the plus side, it's vital to life and a strained natural resource.

Water purification and treatment techniques continue to attract bright ideas from researchers and entrepreneurs, but getting beyond a nifty prototype is challenge they all face, said a panel here at the TechConnect World conference on clean tech and nanotechnology.

Many of the municipal water treatment and distribution systems in the U.S. are in desperate need of repair. Other large potential customers for more energy-efficient or effective water treatment facilities are corporations, such … Read more

Purify water by adding bacteria

Fans of old Chinese martial-arts dramas will have heard of the saying "use poison to combat poison." I've always considered that to be ridiculous, but it turns out the idea is ahead of its time, as now you can purify water using bacteria.

Forget what you know about bacteria and germs. Bacteria is not evil, it's just another simple organism trying to survive and propagate. Researchers at Sam Houston State University in Texas have successfully designed a portable water purification system that uses a set of common bacterial strains to create potable water in less than … Read more

Debug your tap water

Unless you live next door to an icy mountain spring, chances are that you drink purified water. Whether it's from a filtered pitcher, a kitchen faucet tap fixture, a special screw top on your water bottle, iodine tablets, or the tried-and-true store-bought bottled water, the water we drink is, comparatively speaking, pretty darn pure. If you need a way to kill dangerous contaminants that's more portable, then maybe you should be checking out the SteriPEN.

Our countertop purifiers remove contaminants in a multitude of ways, including filtration, water softening, reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration, deionization, and powdered activated carbon treatment ( … Read more

Water specialist AqWise raises $3.6 million

AqWise, which builds condominiums for bacteria, has raised an additional $3.6 million in funding. The founder, though, is toiling in a new venture.

The company, with which we spoke during a swing through Israel in 2006 (just in time for the outbreak of border hostilities), has created an intricate polymer cylinder that, when placed in wastewater treatment ponds, clusters microbes that consume contaminants. The water can then be safely discarded or used to irrigate fields.

The trick is that the honeycombed cylinder sports a huge amount of surface area for microbes to grow. The greater amount of surface area … Read more

Organic hand sanitizer for crazy parents

Attention, parents of school-age children. Are you worried about a growing Purell addiction? CleanWell has the hand sanitizer for you.

The San Francisco-based company has come out with an alcohol-free, all-natural hand sanitizer. I got some samples at the ThinkGreen conference last week and my hands have been free of epidemic-causing bacteria ever since.

The company claims it kills Listeria monocytogenes, Candida (we can make it together) albicans, Streptococcus pygenes, and Salmonella enterica. You can't spray it on chicken, but the salmonella killing would be great for kitchen sanitizing. Spray CleanWell on your hands and it kills over 99 … Read more

It's sunscreen for produce

Purfresh, which used to go by the name Novazone, has tested and now will more actively market a sunscreen for things that come out of the ground.

Called Eclipse, it's a powder made from multicrystalline calcium carbonate. You spray it on onions and other crops to reduce solar stress. Farmers can lose 30 percent or more of their crops to overexposure to the sun, said Purfresh CEO David Cope. The remaining, salable crops can also get damaged and lose some of their value through overexposure. Spray on the powder--which is rated SPF 42--and you can eliminate losses due to … Read more

Killing fungi and bacteria, the Aussie way

HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--Chlorine is bad for you, and iodine isn't, points out Jared Franks, CEO of Ioteq, and that difference is the basis of the company's business.

The Australian company has come up with a water purification system that kills microbes with iodine rather than chlorine or ozone. Ioteq's Isan system basically immerses fruit and vegetables in iodine-soaked water, and monitors the iodine dosage.

After purification, the produce gets bagged and sent to grocery stores. The process leaves a minimal iodine residue that is not harmful to people--and it doesn't change the flavor, Franks … Read more

Making artificial rain in New Mexico

Altela says it has a machine that can make it rain. Really.

The Albuquerque, N.M.-based company's AltelaRain System essentially mimics the evaporation-condensation cycle that makes life on earth possible. The system takes bracken, salty water; boils it; creates steam; and the steam is cooled to become purified water. Like in nature, the water gets cleaned because the salts and other materials get separated during the evaporation process. Rain isn't salty, after all, although the droplets originally came from sea water.

The key is that Altela has come up with a way to make the process energy … Read more

Killing bacteria with stylish kitchen appliances

There must be something in the air today--or the food, at least. Like the CulinaryPrep, the Lotus Sanitizing System from Tersano claims to eliminate fungus and other bacteria from food, but in this case with an environmentally safe blast of ozone.

As an added bonus, it also helps remove cat puke stains from the carpet. More on that in a second.

The unit, which sells for $169.99, is effectively a home ozone generator. A pump sucks in ambient air, and then hits it with a jolt of electricity. The electricity causes the oxygen molecules in the air, which consist … Read more