Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

Register Log in
  • Congratulations IDS on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

nanoSeptic

Status
Not open for further replies.
M

MintJulep

Mechanical
Jun 12, 2003
9,985
I've been asked to research [URL unfurl="true"]https://www.nanoseptic.com/[/url].

nanoSeptic web site said:
How does the NanoSeptic Surface work?
One of the components of the surface is a mineral nano-crystal which acts as a catalyst, charged by visible light. These nano-crystals create a continuous, powerful oxidation reaction. This oxidation reaction breaks down organic material into base components such as CO2. The surface also forms free radicals which act as an additional cleaning agent.
Click to expand...

My initial impression is that the web site has all the hallmarks of "snake oil".

There is a complete lack of anything quantifiable to assess. Everything is "testamonial". "It's great because it makes people feel safe".

But I'm skeptical by nature.

Have any of you looked at this at all?
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

Sort by date Sort by votes
The website doesn't come up for me. But, just from the description, it sounds totally bogus, since oxidation requires a source of atomic oxygen, and it can't come from the "mineral" crystals, since their oxides are tightly bound and atmospheric oxygen requires a boatload of UV to break it down.

They could have made a more believable story with quantum dots emitting UV-C or deep UV which will kill organic pathogens. Hmmm, I'll have to find a decent website name...
This idea isn't completely farfetched:
TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
But the nano-mineral is a catalyst. Not the source of the oxygen....

That distinction makes everything so much more beliveable.[nosmiley]
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
right, that was answered in the latter part of my answer; the only other sources for oxygen would be in the atmosphere, so either CO2 or molecular oxygen, neither of which give up atomic oxygen readily, and the only possibility of breaking down oxygen is with ultraviolet, to generate ozone. But, the efficiency is much worse than using the UV directly, particularly if it can generate UV-C.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yup. Snake oil for the paranoid.

TBH every thing I've ever seen with the word "nano" in it is the same. Pseudo scientific babble with no tests or details.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
This is real Next generation ICs using design rules 1/130th the shortest wavelength of visible light, and, about 1/6 the wavelength of light used in the photolithographic processing. THAT's insane! The existing 7-nm processing is still using 193-nm UV for photolithography ~1/28 the wavelength.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
Upvote 0 Downvote

Memory might be failing, but if I remember my chemistry from 50 years back... oxygen is not required... oxidation is the chemical opposite of reduction...

Dik
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Oxidation is the loss of electrons, no oxygen required.

Good Luck,
Latexman
Pats' Pub's Proprietor
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Anatase titanium dioxide has LONG been used as a means to provide self-cleaning surfaces. It is a magical band-gap semiconductor material, which absorbs photons in the UV and short wave (violet) visible wavelength range and produces free radicals from the energy in those photons- with a positively crap-tastic quantum yield. You get weird species- radicals with unpaired electrons such as *OH (take water, and remove a hydrogen ATOM, leaving behind an OH with an unpaired electron it desperately wants to pair), so-called "singlet oxygen", "holes", and other weird and wonderful transient species.

Will it do disinfection? Depends- is the surface already totally and scrupulously clean, or is it grotty with a dirt load that keeps the (UV and short wave visible) light off the anatase? Or keeps the bugs from immediate, intimate contact with the anatase? The free radicals anatase generates are species like *OH, which are short-lived species which don't live long enough to travel anywhere. Self-reaction of *OH with itself to make HOOH (hydrogen peroxide) has a bimolecular rate constand on the order of 10^8 L/mol s, which means that if you had any *OH around at time zero, after 1 millisecond you have basically none left. No time for it to diffuse anywhere to do any chemistry...It does sort of "conduct" its unpaired electron through water in a sense, but that just means the unpaired electron can react with molecules a few tens or perhaps a few thousand water molecules away- not a micrometer away!

It's more complicated than all that, but the point is that germicidal photochemical surface catalysts do exist. The question as to whether or not they actually work in any meaningful way is really dependent on how they're made and used, and the difference between real world conditions and conditions under which tests are done. And yes, anatase TiO2 has been a kind of snake oil for decades- it has siphoned off research money from governments in return for virtually no meaningful industrial use OTHER than these self-cleaning coatings. As a water treatment technology it has been a total and utter flop, despite many companies trying to commercialize it over decades.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top Bottom