BluAct - Water Purification Technology

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.

BluAct Technologies, obviously 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...

The question is then: does NSF certification suffice to make a technology good enough in water purification? The answer, unfortunately, is NO.

NSF certifications use protocols that are stringent, but often, do not cope with real cases of pollution worldwide. Take mercury for example, 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 instead, the efficiency required by NSF is higher and of the order of 93%. Yet, in the case of Flint crisis (Michigan USA), where contamination reached values beyond thousands of ppb, this criterion would not be stringent enough to guarantee drinking water.

Or consider now Arsenic, 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 in 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!

BluAct Technologies enables treating water heavily contaminated by Arsenic, Lead, Mercury, Chromium, Aluminium and many other heavy metals, with an unprecedented efficiency, way 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.