How It Works
BluAct Technology
BluAct water filtration science builds on the remarkable ability of its proprietary compositions of food amyloid fibrils - such as those thermally processed from ordinary milk - and activated carbon, to attract and hold virtually all contaminants found in both potable water supplies and industrial wastewater. The media function by exhibiting strong adsorption to all contaminants, removing them from the water and holding them for disposal. The nature of the BluAct composition resists clogging and eliminates the need for flushing the media.
BluAct efficiently removes all types of pollutants from water by using technologies which rely on combinations of food protein nanofibrils and activated carbon granules. These technologies make the removal of undesirable and harmful contaminants extremely easy.
We have discovered that food proteins, such as those found in milk, can be converted into protein fibrils -also known as amyloid fibrils- capable to bind and remove pollutants from water at unprecedented efficiencies (as seen in the graphic below).
The technical performance of a water purification technology is dependent on a multitude of factors, such as capacity of pollutants removal, efficiency, operating flux, running and capital costs, consumed energy and operating pressure as well as water recovery efficiency. The interplay between all these factors and how these drive a modern and sustainable approach to water purification have been tackled comprehensively in scientific literature (Chem. Soc. Rev., 2019, 48, 463).
A widely diffused approach to assess a technology performance on removal of contaminants is to comply with certifications, which are standardized protocols evaluating the functioning of a technology. A common and widely accepted certification for heavy metal ions, for example, is the NSF 53, but other certifications also exist such as Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN) standards, DIN/EN, DVGW..etc.
ZeeTech water filters complies with all these certifications and largely meets NSF 53 standards in the greatest majority of heavy metals, such as Arsenic (III and V forms), Lead, Mercury, etc...
Beyond NSF Certification
NSF certifications use protocols that are stringent, but often, do not cope with real cases of pollution worldwide. Mercury is a good example of this. NSF 53 certification requires that a feeding concentration of 6 ppb (parts per billions) of Mercury ends up to 2 ppb in treated water, that is the WHO accepted threshold for drinking water. This corresponds to a mere efficiency of 67%. In the case of Lead, the efficiency required by NSF is higher and of the order of 93%. In the Flint water crisis, where contamination reached values beyond thousands of ppb, this criterion would not be stringent enough to guarantee drinking water.
Arsenic is the most frequent natural pollutant in groundwater. NSF certification requires that a feeding concentration of 50 ppb Arsenic is purified down to 10 ppb, the WHO accepted threshold for drinking water contaminated by Arsenic. This corresponds to an efficiency of 80%. Countries such as India, China, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bangladesh, Peru, Burkina Faso and many more, may have their groundwater values of Arsenic reaching 800, sometimes 1000 ppb. It is clear that the NSF protocols would fail to guarantee drinking water in these regions. Even assuming the same efficiency requested by NSF, the final concentration in the treated water would remain of the order of 15 to 20 times above the WHO limit.
Our water filters treats water heavily contaminated by Arsenic, Lead, Mercury, Chromium, Aluminum and other heavy metals with an unprecedented efficiency that is beyond NSF standards. The wide spectrum of accessible heavy metals extends to other compounds, such as organic pesticides, contaminants and even to halogens, such as Fluoride.
Our filter puts its unique technologies at the service of people around the world and is serving in a number of countries with extreme levels of pollution (e.g. >800 ppb As), bringing back to people safe drinking water, there where other technologies have failed.
Unlike the inefficiency, waste, and high energy requirements necessary for traditional methods of water filtration, BluAct's new technology pulls contaminants from water at astonishingly high ratios without wasting process water, and without affecting the beneficial mineral composition of water. And the energy required to push water through the BluAct media is no higher than the normal system pressure of a typical municipal water supply. By comparison, it should be noted, the reverse osmosis water filtration method requires post-processed water mineral composition re-adjustment, expends great amounts of energy to force water through extremely fine membranes, and great percentages of water are wasted in use for flushing these membranes - resulting in the loss of otherwise usable precious water.
Our water filters contain granular and membrane media that can be used to recover valuable metals such as platinum, gold, silver, and copper, etc. from industrial wastewater.
Below are some of the features of our water filters with patented BluAct technology:
- No Energy and pressure required, low operation cost
- High efficiency for multiple pollutant removal: inorganic, organic & biological pollutants
- Sustainable raw materials
- Non-specific adsorption of different pollutants (in contrast to Ion exchange resins)
- Recovery of valuable metals
- Easy to scale up and scale down up to 100 m3/h
- Color and odor removal
- No need to re-mineralize the water (in contrast to reverse osmosis)
- Ions to macrometer size particles removal
Relevant Articles and Studies
Amyloid–carbon hybrid membranes for universal water purification
Efficient purification of arsenic-contaminated water using amyloid–carbon hybrid membranes
Assessing the Binding Performance of Amyloid–Carbon Membranes toward Heavy Metal Ions
Sustainable technologies for water purification from heavy metals: review and analysis
Amyloid Fibrils Aerogel for Sustainable Removal of Organic Contaminants from Water